CRIME WATCH: Five men arrested in West Seattle, charged with seeking to pay underage girls for sex
Last weekend, we heard several mentions of arrests in The Junction that didn’t seem tied to specific incidents or Southwest Precinct police. Then we heard from a resident who saw a heavy response of officers after one of the arrests and told us an officer told them it was about “molestation.” That led us to suspect officers were arresting suspects who thought they were showing up to meet, and potentially sexually abuse, juveniles, but learned they had been communicating with police instead.
Following up this week with the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, we confirmed that’s what was going on. Five men arrested in West Seattle – none from here – have since been charged. According to charging documents:
30-year-old Chien-Cheng Wang of North Seattle is charged with Communication With a Minor For Immoral Purposes and Attempted Commercial Sexual Abuse Of A Minor. He was arrested Saturday evening near 41st and Alaska, where he allegedly thought he was going to meet up with a 15-year-old girl and pay her $300 for sex.
45-year-old Inderjeet S. Nehal of Everett is also charged with Communication With a Minor For Immoral Purposes and Attempted Commercial Sexual Abuse Of A Minor. He was arrested late last Friday night at an address that cross-references to the Bank of America parking lot in The Junction, where he allegedly thought he was going to meet up with a 14-year-old girl and pay her $50 for sex.
21-year-old Jordan M. Kaapana-Ross of Kent is also charged with Communication With a Minor For Immoral Purposes and Attempted Commercial Sexual Abuse Of A Minor. He was arrested earlier last Friday evening, also in or near the Junction B of A lot, after allegedly arranging to meet up with a 14-year-old girl and pay her $150 for sex.
32-year-old Curt R. Naraval of Spanaway is also charged with Communication With a Minor For Immoral Purposes and Attempted Commercial Sexual Abuse Of A Minor. He wa arrested Saturday evening in the Junction B of A vicinity after allegedly arranging to meet up with two 15-year-old girls and pay them $250 for sex.
27-year-old Manuel C. Leggett of Burlington is also charged with Communication With a Minor For Immoral Purposes, and Attempted Commercial Sexual Abuse Of A Minor. He was arrested Friday evening, also in the Junction B of A vicinity. after allegedly arranging to meet up with a 15-year-old girl and pay her $100 for sex.
The charging documents in these cases tell similar stories of the communication between the suspects and undercover officers representing themselves as teenage girls. No one involved was a West Seattle resident – the narratives in the charging documents say the meetup location here was suggested by the undercover officers for various reasons such as it was near where the “girl” lived. According to the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, this was part of a citywide effort to crack down on this kind of exploitation. The King County Jail register shows all five have been released; Nehal, Kaapana-Ross, and Leggett spent one day in jail; Wang and Naraval were in jail for two days. Arraignments for all five are scheduled early next week.
