Police uncover alleged sex trafficking operation after woman found hiding in gas station bathroom
By Cody Alcorn
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EAST POINT, Georgia (WXIA) — A welfare check on Thanksgiving at a gas station in East Point led police to uncover an alleged multi-county human trafficking operation involving several metro Atlanta hotels.
Marlandow Jeffries, 45, and Lashandra Walker, 47, are both charged with trafficking a person for sexual servitude.
According to their arrest warrant, East Point Police officers were called to the Chevron gas station on Virginia Avenue on Nov. 27, where a woman was found hiding in a locked bathroom, yelling that she needed help.
Police said she told officers she had been trafficked for weeks across the metro area and asked to retrieve her belongings from a nearby hotel room.
Officers traced her back to the Country Inn & Suites by Radisson on Hardin Avenue, where staff confirmed the room she had stayed in had been repeatedly rebooked under the name of a woman investigators later identified as Lashandra Walker.
The hotel also confirmed another person listed on the room, Marlandow Kentrel “Orlando” Jeffries had left before officers arrived.
According to the warrant, officers documented CashApp and Chime transactions tied to the operation and collected photos, ads, text messages and hotel records as evidence.
Investigators said the victim described being moved between hotel rooms at the Country Inn & Suites in East Point; a Quality Inn on Jonesboro Road in Morrow; a Holiday Inn on Highway 138 in Stockbridge; and a Comfort Inn on Powers Ferry Circle in Marietta. She also gave detectives descriptions of Jeffries, Walker, their vehicles, their home address in Conley, and others she said were involved.
According to the warrant, the woman who was rescued told investigators that another woman known only by nicknames had also been trafficked and beaten at the same East Point hotel.
Neither of the suspects have been granted bond as of Tuesday night.
If anyone has additional information on either of these suspects, you’re urged to call East Point Police.
Contact the Human Trafficking Hotline
To report suspected human trafficking in Georgia, call the Statewide 24-Hour Human Trafficking Hotline at (866) 363-4842. If you have reason to believe that a victim is in imminent danger, call 911 or your local law enforcement agency to file a report. For more information on how to get help for both national and foreign-born victims of human trafficking, visit endhtga.org.
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