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Sex offender kidnaps, tries to sell CLE teen

Posted at 10:49 PM, Mar 09, 2016
and last updated 2016-03-09 23:39:18-05

A convicted sex offender is back behind bars after East Cleveland Police said he kidnapped a teenager, tried to sell her for sex and feed her drugs.

For the 17-year-old victim's mother Pamela Caldwell, it's still just sinking in.

"It's kind of hard to believe that that really just happened to her and the police are like 'No, it's real,'" she said.

Luckily, her daughter Javier is safe tonight.

"The whole night, he kept telling me how he had killed people and he will lay me where I stand at and nobody would come looking for me," Javier said in an exclusive interview.

It started around 9 p.m. Monday when Javier got on the Rapid train at the Windermere station in East Cleveland. She said a man snatched her phone and then at the next stop -- he snatched her.

"He grabbed me by my hair and just kept pulling me back, or pulling me wherever he was going," she recounted.

For the next five hours, Javier said the man dragged her around town -- not in his own car, but on the RTA’s Healthline or catching a ride from a friend.

"Luckily he didn't have nowhere to go," she said. "He didn't have a car or Lord knows where I would have been at."

From the Superior Rapid station, Javier said the man took her to 2100 Lakeside, a homeless shelter in Cleveland. Standing outside, he tried to sell her to passersby for sex.

Then, he took her to the Best Steak and Gyro restaurant in East Cleveland, where she said he tried to feed her an Ecstasy pill until finally, she caught the eye of a worker and whispered to him to call police.

Minutes later, East Cleveland Police arrived and found out the man was 26-year-old Carlos Brown -- a habitual sex offender currently on probation for corruption of a minor and with eight convictions on his record spanning several counties.

"There's no telling how many more victims will come forward and say, 'Hey, I ran into him, he did the same thing to me," Pamela said.

Brown is currently charged with kidnapping, corruption of a minor and drug offenses.

East Cleveland Police are working with the city prosecutor to determine if more charges will be filed.