Man Arrested For Sexually Assaulting Teen He Held Captive In Storage Room For Days

A Houston area man has been arrested for sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl he allegedly kidnapped and locked inside a storage room for five days.

Joel Micah Arnold, a 34-year-old man, was charged Wednesday with aggravated kidnapping, sexual assault and trafficking of a child.

The teen girl told the investigators that she was abducted at gunpoint on March 27 and was taken to a storage facility at Cypress, where she was held captive for five days.

The teen girl also told the police that Arnold forcibly injected her with drugs and threatened her with a gun while she was repeatedly sexually assaulted.

The victim raised a complaint with the human trafficking unit of the police on April 8, Click 2 Houston reported.

The teenager managed to escape from captivity after texting a friend from Arnold’s phone that he had left in the storage unit.

“Arnold got very scared of that fact,” Alan Rosen, Harris County Precinct 1 Constable, said. “He opened the door and he ran and she ran too,” Rosen added.

The girl then sought help from a nearby store, where someone recognized her and contacted the police. The police said that they had found physical evidence corroborating the teen girl’s story.

While Arnold was taken into custody, police also found several checks, driver's licenses and credit cards belonging to others, ABC13 reported.

Investigators believe that there could be more victims who were sexually assaulted by the accused. Anyone with information, or potential victims, were asked to call the Precinct One human trafficking hotline at (832) 927-1650.

In a similar incident, a Long Island man was arrested in February for trying to kidnap two teen girls while posing as a police officer. Donald Cristiano Jr., 46, approached the girls aged 14 and 16 after identifying himself as a police officer and offered them a ride to a nearby library. The teens accepted the offer and rode with him to the destination. He then tried to kidnap one of the girls by speeding away and groping her. Cristiano was arrested on charges including kidnapping, endangering the welfare of the child and first-degree criminal impersonation.