A Kentucky man who allegedly raped a 16-year-old girl and hid her behind a trap door claimed he had been trying to help the teen after she was kicked out of her North Carolina home.
Zackary Jones, 34 — who was arrested after the alleged victim was found under a trap door covered by a rug in his bedroom in Lincoln County — insisted that he did not have nefarious intentions and believed the teen was an adult.
“Her grandma kicked her out. She didn’t appear to be that age [16],” Jones told Fox 19 in a jailhouse interview about the girl, who was missing for weeks. “She had all kinds of piercings.”
Jones said he went to North Carolina to help the girl, whom he allegedly met online and was told she was 18.
“She hid on her own free will. She was actually in the bed when police officers first came in there,” he told Fox 19.
But the girl’s family denied his allegations, saying she had met up with the suspect after running away from her grandmother.
“She started taking her privileges away from her, her phone and stuff,” the teen’s grandfather, Eugene Baughman, told the outlet. “That’s when she got mad and left. She would not come back home.”
The girl was reported missing in early December.
“I was thinking she was dead,” he said.
“I don’t think he was rescuing anyone. I think he was trying to find another person to victimize,” Baughman added about the suspect, who Police said admitted to giving the girl drugs and tried to destroy drug paraphernalia in front of cops.
Police initially visited Jones’ house after his mother reported a fight between her adult son and his “girlfriend,” WTVQ reported.
Jones claimed the girl wasn’t there, but officers quickly cuffed him after spotting drug paraphernalia out in the open.
They then found the girl, who appeared “very high,” and realized she was the missing North Carolina teen.
She told investigators that Jones sexually assaulted her and that the two used crack cocaine together, according to the arrest citation obtained by WCNC.
The victim said Jones initially told her he was only 19 and that he allegedly forced her to tell his family she was 18.
The girl also said they were pulled over by a cop for a traffic violation, and that Jones said he would shoot the officer if they were asked to get out of the car.
Jones allegedly admitted to police that he had sex with the teen after picking her up from her home, according to the arrest report.
Jones faces charges of rape, sodomy, assault, strangulation, unlawful imprisonment, terroristic threatening, unlawful transaction with a minor and various drug-related counts.