Arrested for sex trafficking of a teenage girl who went missing at a Mavs game

DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) — This crime made headlines around the world: A North Texas girl was sold for sexual exploitation after she disappeared from a Mavericks game. Now, nine months later, Dallas police say they’ve made an arrest in the case.

CBS11 I-Team reporter Ginger Allen recently met with the girl’s parents. Kyle and Brooke Morris have been waiting for months to find out who took their daughter from AAC last April. They knew the people in the grainy security footage only by what they were wearing. “There is a video of a yellow hoodie using a cell phone, then a gray hoodie coming up,” Kyle said, describing what their lawyer saw in the video.

The Morrises say the man in yellow spoke to their 15-year-old daughter as she walked to the bathroom. “She told me it was like, ‘Let’s walk to the end of the game until it’s over, and then you can go back to your dad,'” Brooke said.

A DPD source told CBS11 detectives that the man in yellow is 33-year-old Emanuel Cartagena. He is accused of child sexual abuse.

The girl told her parents that she was lured into the garage, where she was raped and then taken away. She won’t be found for ten days. Her parents, with the help of a private investigator, tracked her down to a hotel in Oklahoma City where she was being sold.

“She was under the influence of drugs for several days,” Brooke said. “So parts of her memory are still coming back.”

None of the suspects were in Dallas, but Oklahoma City police made three arrests. Two Oklahoma suspects have pleaded guilty and are serving prison terms, while a third is awaiting trial. The Morrises say the Dallas police refused to accept their report until October, six months after the incident. The DPD has previously said it will not accept the report due to a law that makes missing children aged 13-17 count as fugitives and reports must be filed in the city where the teen lives.

In December, Crime Stoppers released surveillance footage of three men they identified as people of interest. Now one of these men is behind bars, and the Morrises hope that more answers will come soon.

Zeke Fortenberry, the lawyer for the Morrises, said in a statement:

“On behalf of the victim and her parents, we are pleased to learn that Emanuel Cartagena has been arrested for child sexual abuse. We believe that Cartagena was the person who originally lured the victim from the Dallas Mavericks game to the American Airlines Center. before raping her in Dallas. The victim was then sold to Oklahoma. There have been no arrests in Dallas in the nine months since she was sexually assaulted, which is excruciating for the victim and her parents. The arrest of Cartagena is progress towards justice. done, and we appreciate the efforts of the Dallas Police Department. We hope other suspects linked to her sexual assault in Dallas will also be arrested in the near future.”