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Texas Man Kidnapped 15-Year-Old And Locked Her Up For Months, Police Say
Trevion Shields allegedly told his 15-year-old ex-girlfriend he would kill her and her family if she tried to escape.
Editor's note: While the original version of this story didn't include the victim's name, it did include other potentially identifying information. The story has been updated to remove those references.
A Texas man is accused of kidnapping his 15-year-old ex-girlfriend and imprisoning her at his Houston home for several months.
Trevion Shields, 20, was arrested on Friday, November 8 for aggravated kidnapping by Harris County authorities. Shields, police said, hid the underage girl in his apartment for weeks, and threatened to kill her and her family if she left him.
The 15-year-old, who wasn’t identified by law enforcement, vanished on Jan. 28, 2019 from outside her mother's place of employment in Houston. At the time, the girl’s mother said her daughter was with her at work and had asked for keys so she could go out to the family’s truck to retrieve some books.
While her daughter was outside, Shields allegedly got off a bus and approached the vehicle the teenager was sitting in. The teen told police that she tried to “ignore Trevion for a while,” but admitted the 20-year-old eventually convinced her to grab some food across the street. Police said the pair then got on a bus and disappeared.
“[The mother] stated that she saw Trevion drag [her daughter] by her arm as they ran across the street,” according to an arrest affidavit obtained by Oxygen.com. “[She] stated that [her daughter] was looking back at her mother crying due to the fact that she didn’t want to go with Trevion.”
Shields allegedly first took the teenager to a Target, where he used a pair of scissors to cut off an ankle monitor the girl’s family had installed. The girl had a tracking device, police said, because she was known to run away from home. Her mother had reported her missing on three separate occasions in 2018. For these reasons, the teenager’s disappearance in January wasn’t initially treated as a kidnapping.
Over the course of nearly three months, Shields allegedly locked his ex-girlfriend in his home. The girl, police claimed, was petrified of Shields and his family.
“Trevion would stand in front of the doorway with his hands up telling her if she leaves he would kill her, her dad, her brother, and he would have his mom beat her mom," the affidavit reads.
In one instance, Shields’ mother, Erica White — who was allegedly aware of her son’s relationship with the underage teen and referred to the 15-year-old as “her daughter-in-law” — allegedly showed up at the workplace of the girl’s mother and threatened her.
The teen also told police Shields kept a gun.
But in April, she crafted her escape. The teen told police she got Shields’ phone, dialed her probation officer — who she told to meet her at a McDonald’s — and took off for a bus stop. Shields, however, allegedly chased her down and again threatened her family before the teenager decided to return once more to his home. However, the probation officer phoned police and the girl was removed from Shields’ residence a short time later.
“This guy had scared her into believing that she would be killed, that her family would be killed if she tried to escape,” Constable Alan Rosen told Oxygen.com. “She eventually got bold enough, took his phone, and was able to call her mother and a probation officer, which led us to her. I can only imagine what these parents were going through while their child was missing for all this time.”
Even though the teenager was found in spring, it took law enforcement months to build a case and bring charges against Shields since the 15-year-old initially wasn’t cooperating with authorities.
“At first she wasn’t being entirely truthful with us,” Kevin Quinn, a spokesperson for Harris County Constable Precinct 1, told Oxygen.com.
“You have to remember you’re dealing with a 15-year-old girl who was just put through a traumatic situation,” Quinn added. “She was brainwashed and emotionally abused on top of the physical abuse and sexual abuse so she wasn’t fully compliant with investigators in the beginning.”
Officials said they’re actively pursuing sexual assault charges against Shields as well.
Police said the teenager is undergoing counseling.
Rosen, the Harris County Constable, cautioned parents to closely monitor their children’s online activity.
“Don’t allow your child just to sit in their room at 10 o’clock at night and surf the internet because that’s precisely how this predator found this girl,” Rosen, a father of three, explained. “He was surfing the internet, they started conversing online, and that led to the ultimate kidnapping of her. There are very serious predators out there lurking trying to find kids to either human traffic or do other things with.”
Shields, who hasn't yet been arraigned, is being held on a $100,000 bond, Harris County Clerk's office said. His next scheduled court appearance is on Jan. 10, 2020.
Shields was also convicted for evading arrest in 2018, according to online court documents. He was also charged with criminal trespass, but those charges were dismissed.
