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SALT LAKE CITY — A man currently in prison after he was arrested last year in an undercover internet sting has now been charged with kidnapping and raping a high school student in 2017.
Jeremy James King, 41, who is currently incarcerated in the Central Utah Correctional Facility, was charged Monday in 3rd District Court with aggravated kidnapping, rape and object rape, all first-degree felonies.
On Sept. 28, 2017, a 15-year-old girl was walking near her school in Clearfield when King pulled up, “got out of the car and started chasing her,” according to charging documents. After he caught the girl, King “dragged her back to his car.”
The girl said she “tried to kick, scream and bite” but couldn’t escape, the charges state. King knew the name of the girl’s brother and told her he would hurt him if she tried to get away, according to the charges. He then took her phone and disabled it.
King drove the girl to a shed in Kearns where he raped her, the charges state. He then handed her a knife and told her to cut herself, according to the charges.
While King was out of the shed, the girl escaped by crawling out of a window, the charges state.
The girl ran to nearby David Gourley Park, 4200 West 5015 South, where two people called police after seeing the girl “who was visibly distraught ... and told them that she had just been attacked,” according to a search warrant affidavit filed in 3rd District Court.
The girl was taken to a hospital where doctors conducted an exam and DNA was collected. But the case was closed pending the discovery of further evidence, the warrant states.
In January 2019, King was arrested after talking to an undercover officer posing as a 13-year-old girl online, according to a police affidavit. He pleaded guilty in March 2019 to enticing a minor and two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, both second-degree felonies.
But just five months after that case was resolved, King was arrested again in August for soliciting someone who he thought was a pregnant 13-year-old girl but was actually another undercover officer, according to charing documents. He pleaded guilty in September to enticing a minor, a second-degree felony, and was sentenced to one to 15 years in the Utah State Prison.
With his convictions, King became a registered sex offender in Utah and his DNA was added to a national database.
In October, the Utah State Crime Lab found a match with the DNA that was collected in 2017, implicating King as a possible suspect, according to the warrant. The girl was shown a photo lineup in November and twice picked King from a stack of mugshots, the warrant states.
