Human trafficking charges dropped against MS man after mother, children stop cooperating
A state prosecutor in Pensacola, Florida, dropped forced labor or services by human trafficking charges against 53-year-old Mark Wells after the mother of the two minor victims recanted her previous statements to law enforcement that ultimately led to the arrest, records show.
Assistant State Attorney Nathaniel D. Sabastian filed court papers in September to say the state was dismissing two felony human trafficking charges and two misdemeanor counts of contributing to the delinquency of a child.
In the court documents, Sabastian said both the victims and their mother “have not cooperated with the prosecution of this case, in that they failed to respond to numerous and repeated attempts to contact them.”
Wells was set to go on trial in October.
According to the prosecutor, contact was eventually made with the mother and “H.D.” at their Mississippi home, “during which the mother recanted the statements made to law enforcement and indicated that the minors did have permission of herself and the father to travel to Pensacola.”
In addition, the prosecutor wrote that the mother said the “minors were to be fairly compensated for work and were not being exploited.”
Authorities in Pensacola made the arrest after finding the teens, ages 15 and 16, at a Hampton Inn & Suites. The officer had gone to the motel after one of the teen victims called police for help.
Police arrested Wells in March.
According to that report, one of the minors told police Wells, a former landlord, had picked them up from home two days before they arrived in Florida with the promise to pay them $50 a day to work at his “Cracktech company,” the officer said in his report.
“She was unsure of what she would be doing,” the officer said. Wells told the minors he “would teach them the job later.”
The girls first spent a night at Wells’s home, then took them from the Mississippi Coast to Florida.
In Pensacola, police said Wells switched hotels because one had too many people, the officer said in his report. Gulfport police then called one of the teenagers after the mother filed a missing persons report. At that point, the officer wrote that Wells “got scared and left the room.”
“He didn’t want to deal with any cops,” the report said.
Afterwards, Wells reportedly took off with one of the teens in a new white Chevy Tahoe with tinted windows.
The mother told police she did not know Wells had left Mississippi with the teens and had not permitted him to take her children.
The mother said she started driving to Florida to get the girls, but ran out of gas on the way, the report says.
The Florida Department of Children and Families took custody of the teens.
This story was originally published October 28, 2024 at 12:21 PM.
