It is a crime that is hidden in plain sight, prevalent all over North Carolina. The details of what happened on Hat Walt Lane are disturbing.
"It doesn't matter the economic status or neighborhood you live in, everyone is accessible online," said Pam Strickland with ENC Stop Human Trafficking.
North Carolina is seeing a record number of human trafficking cases -- 235 were reported statewide in 2023, the last year for which data is available.
A search warrant details how one case unfolded in Wendell.
It started with a meeting on Snapchat.
According to the warrants, a woman first met Dustin Letchworth. They developed a casual relationship, and she agreed to meet him in Wendell at the home of another man, Daryl Holden.
Inside that home on Hat Walt Lane, the warrant says, the men gave the woman cocaine, then coerced her into performing sex acts to "pay off" her debt for the drugs.
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The warrant says that when the victim tried to escape after a violent assault, she was chased, dragged back inside, beaten with a wrench and finally rescued by her mother.
Both Letchworth and Holden face charges of attempted first-degree murder, first-degree kidnapping, human trafficking, promoting prostitution for profit and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill and are being held at the Wake County Detention Center without bond.
In another recent case, two Harnett County men are accused of taking a 15-year-old to the Outer Banks to engage in sex. The child met the men on social media, where they exchanged messages before one man, Elihue Martin Mahler, 31, arranged to pick her up from her Spring Lake home.
Mahler and Austyn Lee Cole face charges of trafficking a child victim, kidnapping and felony conspiracy. Each is being held on $5 million bond.
Mahler also instructed the teen to “sneak out and start walking down the street,” according to the messages in the warrant for his arrest.
"Folks don't want to believe that we actually have human trafficking all around us," said Strickland.
Strickland said, in 2020, 260 cases of trafficking were reported to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, ranking North Carolina No. 9 among the 50 states in cases reported.
Strickland says because human trafficking is a crime which hides in the shadows, the true number of cases in North Carolina is likely much higher.
In North Carolina, hotel-based commercial sex is the most prevalent form. As far as the case in Wendell, both men charged have been indicted for the crimes.