By LeaAnne Klentzman
An Illinois man traveled well over 1,000 miles from Pearl City, Illinois, to a Katy Texas parking lot to find himself arrested facing Aggravated Kidnapping charges after he had driven all that way to meet the 14 year old girl he had been communicating with over the internet.
According to Sheriff’s spokesman Bob Haenel, the parents of a 14 year old girl noted a strange exchange on Facebook and took away the girl’s electronic devices and called the sheriff’s office. Haenel went on to explain that originally James Wean Jr., 49, was communicating with a real 14 year old girl, until her parents interceded.
Haenel said, “The indication given to the detective online was that Wean was planning to take the girl away, possibly out of the country.”
For the two weeks prior to Wean traveling to Fort Bend County, he thought he was communicating online with the 14 year old girl, however, he was, in fact, communicating with a Special Crimes detective posing as a teenage girl while at the Sheriff’s Office.
According to Haenel Wean drove from his Pearl City home to that fateful parking lot in Katy Texas where he was met not by his intended 14 year old victim but by a gaggle of vest wearing gun tote’n sheriff’s deputies.
James Wean Jr., 49, is charged with Attempted Aggravated Kidnapping after his arrest at a gas station in the 3500 block of Pin Oak at about 9 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 21. His bond was set at $500,000 with the condition that he surrenders his passport, wear a tracking device and have no contact with the victim or her family.