TYLER, Texas — Arrest documents allege a Tyler man and woman worked together to prostitute a teenager multiple times in East Texas earlier this summer.
James Emmitt Dews III, 24, and Hannah Nicole Moore, 23, both of Tyler, were arrested for trafficking a child, which is a first-degree felony, on Thursday, according to the Tyler police. Both are in the Smith County Jail on $750,000 bonds each.
The arrests came through a joint investigation between the Tyler Police Department and the Office of the Texas Attorney General’s Human Trafficking Unit, North Texas Human Trafficking Taskforce.
According to an arrest affidavit, the victim’s mother reported to the police that she saw items related to sex workers and sex trafficking on her child’s phone. After picking up the child at a Tyler hotel, the detective reviewed evidence that the teen was being sex trafficked.
The teen’s phone had messages with contacts listed as “JD” and “Hanna,” who were later identified as Dews and Moore, about meetups for sex in exchange for money and requests for sexually explicit photos, the affidavit said.
In the messages, Dews wrote to the teen that he would introduce her to “hustle game.” The detective said the term “game” refers to prostitution. He also told the victim that they would be “working” in the East Texas area, including Tyler, Longview and Nacogdoches.
Evidence showed that Moore would coordinate “meetups” for several individuals for the victim. In an interview, the victim said they met Dews through a dating app and the teen met Moore later on. The victim told an interviewer that Dews was the pimp and she was trafficked at hotels in the Tyler and Longview area, the affidavit read.
Investigators found conversations between the victim and Moore about trafficking meetups and text threads with CashApp account names. The victim said the people they meet up with would pay in cash or send money via CashApp to Moore.
For The Silent and the Children’s Advocacy Center of Smith County also provided resources and assistance during this investigation.
The case remains under investigation and it will be forward to the Smith County District Attorney’s Office.
