A 16-year-old girl told police on Sunday that she had been forced to ingest drugs and have sex in New Orleans after running away from her home in Mississippi, leading to the arrest of a 39-year-old man on suspicion of rape.
An Orleans Parish Criminal District Court judge on Monday ordered that Gregory Dunning be held behind bars on a count of first-degree rape in lieu of $150,000 bail.
According to court records, Louisiana State Police troopers encountered the unidentified girl at the center of the case during a traffic stop at the corner of Canal and Marais streets in New Orleans' Central Business District about 3:30 p.m. Sunday.
The troopers confirmed the girl had been reported missing in Mississippi, and she told them she was drugged and raped after arriving in New Orleans, court records said.
After being taken to Children's Hospital for a medical examination, she elaborated that she had stayed with Dunning at a hotel on Tulane Avenue in Mid-City before being sexually assaulted and told she couldn't leave.
In a follow-up interview with a federal agent dedicated to fighting human trafficking, the girl added that she had come to New Orleans after running away from her home in Lucedale, Mississippi, because her father had molested her, court records said.
She said she left Mississippi in her dad's car, which was stolen sometime around the 4th of July holiday. Then, an unidentified man injected her intravenously with drugs and gave her "a white powdered substance" before she met Dunning, court records said.
Court records allege that Dunning, along with an unidentified friend, had rented a hotel room in the 3900 block of Tulane that they had to leave due to "a death in the pool." The documents don't specify whether that phrase was a reference to the 24-year-old father and 7-year-old daughter who were found dead at the bottom of the pool at the Midtown Hotel at 3900 Tulane on Saturday night.
In any event, the girl alleged that Dunning had forced her to have sex after returning from a nearby grocery, court records said. She said she asked him to stop, but he allegedly ignored her and left when he was done.
Authorities arrested Dunning on the block where the traffic stop occurred and jailed him during the early morning hours of Monday.
In Louisiana, first-degree rape calls for life imprisonment.