WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT. Investigators found a 13-year-old girl trapped inside a box in a man’s basement after they met through Snapchat, police say.
A 13-year-old girl who disappeared after meeting a man online was found alive stuffed in a box inside her home, along with evidence that she had been sexually assaulted, according to authorities.
Ki-Shawn Crumity, 26, faces charges of human trafficking, sexual assault, unlawful contact with a minor and corruption of a child following his arrest in Pittsburgh, United States, on Thursday. Authorities say the teen, a resident of Baker, Louisiana, disappeared on October 20 after meeting Crumity through social media.
He is one of at least three men who were arrested amid an investigation involving numerous law enforcement agencies across states, The Guardian reports. “This child… was groomed, exploited and then sexually abused by strangers who found her online,” Liz Murrill, Louisiana’s attorney general, said in a statement Friday. “This is just one example of the dangers of social media and human trafficking.”
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After receiving information from federal agents, police discovered the girl trapped in a box covered with sheets in her basement, more than 1,000 miles from her own home. She was immediately taken to the hospital where evidence of sexual assault was recovered, according to local media outlet WTAE.
According to a criminal complaint seen by the publication, the girl told investigators she connected with Crumity on Snapchat. He allegedly promised to help a trusted adult adopt her. The teen said she traveled to Pittsburgh taking a Greyhound bus, and once at Crumity’s house, they slept in a bed in the basement along with a third person, a woman, according to the complaint.
Crumity gave the girl edibles, a term used to describe foods containing cannabis, and sexually assaulted her repeatedly for about a week, he told investigators, according to WTAE.
She said he told her she would “get in trouble” and that he knew she had run away, she alleges. The girl told authorities that being in the hospital was “the safest she had ever felt,” the complaint states. Crumity allegedly admitted to having sexual relations with the victim, PEOPLE information.
“On October 30, 2025, the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police’s Special Victims Unit received a report initiated by the United States Marshals that a juvenile victim from Louisiana was located at an address in the 1200 block of Davis Avenue in the Brighton Heights neighborhood of Pittsburgh,” local officials said in a statement. Press release.
Another man, Ronald Smith, 62, has also been arrested in connection with the girl’s disappearance. Smith and another man, Alvin Hanson, allegedly drove her from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to Georgia before putting her on a bus heading north.
Smith is charged with simple kidnapping and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, according to authorities. Meanwhile, Hanson, 64, was arrested on a charge of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, said Brian Fair of the U.S. Marshals Service.
Investigators have said they anticipate making more arrests in the case. Louisiana News Station WAFB has cited officials as saying that a man and a woman, both from the Washington, D.C., area, were in Crumity’s basement at the time the girl was rescued.
