A woman who told police last week she’d been held as a sex slave for more than a year has disappeared from the women’s treatment center where she was taken after she was found, AL.com reported.
Brookside, Alabama, police officers found Shannon McKinney, 25, on Thursday inside a squalid, abandoned house in the former north Alabama mining town when utility investigators contacted them about electricity theft at the home, the Brookside Police Department said.
The utility investigators told police they initially made contact with a man who fled the scene. Police entered the home and found McKinney, who told them “she was a victim who was drugged and forced against her will to have sex with numerous unknown males in exchange for money, drugs, or stolen goods for more than a year.”
At approximately 3:30pm on 1/30/20 Brookside Officers responded to the 100 block of Church Street after receiving a call…
Posted by Brookside Police Department on Friday, January 31, 2020
McKinney named two men she said “were actively involved in sexual prostitution who forced her to trade sex for money, drugs and property,” police said. On Friday, police announced that Logan Williams and Steven Hollier were “person(s) of interest suspected of Promoting Prostitution, Theft of Services, Possession of Drug Paraphernalia, theft charges, with potential felony charges pending the conclusion of the investigation.” Williams turned himself in on Saturday, detectives said, and he was taken into custody on prior warrants from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office. He has not been charged in the prostitution case or the utility theft case, and he’s being held without bond.
Hollier is still at large, and police said late Saturday that McKinney’s family believes she may be with him. McKinney left the treatment center where she’d been taken on Friday morning.
Police said the abandoned house where McKinney was found “was in horrible condition with no running water or utilities.” After obtaining a search warrant, they found syringes, stolen credit cards and property from people in and around Jefferson, Walker, and Shelby counties, narcotic paraphernalia, and other “confidential items of evidence.” They obtained warrants for Hollier’s arrest for theft of services and utility tampering.
Brookside police said Homeland Security Investigations was handling McKinney’s case, and urged anyone with information about her whereabouts to call Detective Bynum at (205) 674-9275.
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[Featured image: Shannon McKinney/Brookside Police Department]
