It was a steamy day in Las Vegas when a cop spotted Christian Brandon O’Neal Scurlock, 21, grab a 13-year-old girl by the neck and shove her into a Mercedes Benz near the Hotel Galaxy on Dean Martin Drive. The violence was enough that cops approached the vehicle to intervene where they discovered another teen, 16, in the backseat with “several condoms in plain view.”
O’Neal, federal prosecutors now say, was a brutal pimp, one that bragged about it on Instagram. The teens had been reported missing by their families in Los Angeles.
“Both victims told police that O’Neal had brought them to Las Vegas to provide prostitution services as minor commercial sex workers and that they usually worked on “Fig,” short for Figueroa Street in Los Angeles,” according to a federal complaint. O’Neal required both minor victims to give him the money they earned from prostitution.”
The Figueroa Corridor – a 3.5-mile stretch of Figueroa Street in DTLA stretching from Gage Avenue down to Imperial Highway is a notorious haven for prostitution. After interviewing the young victims, LAPD detectives and federal officials rolled footage obtained from surveillance cameras in the area and found a video of O’Neal ordering the 13-year-old to strip off her clothes and stand naked in the streets, the complaint states.
O’Neal, 21, of Moreno Valley, has now been indicted for allegedly sex trafficking two minors and transporting the minor victims across state lines for the purposes of engaging in prostitution, one of three men who have been forcing young girls into human trafficking on the Figueroa Corridor.
Now investigators have created a new task force to address the scourge of human trafficking in the area. The initiative – called the Figueroa Corridor Human Trafficking Initiative – features federal and local law enforcement working together to target human traffickers and those who perpetuate illegal sex work, especially involving minors. The program will also offer services, investigators announced Wednesday.
“The Figueroa Corridor area is ground zero for human trafficking and victims are abused and exploited there every day,” said United States Attorney Martin Estrada. “With this initiative, we are combining federal and local resources to focus on prosecuting more cases federally, particularly those involving victims who are children, and coordinating with our local partners to hold perpetrators accountable. It is imperative that we take an all-hands approach to stop the human trafficking happening right in our backyard.”
Source Agencies
