2 men arrested in case of missing Utah teen

South Jordan police have announced the arrests of a Florida man and a Herriman man in connection with the probe into a missing Utah teen.

South Jordan police have announced the arrests of a Florida man and a Herriman man in connection with the probe into a missing Utah teen. (Spenser Heaps, Deseret News)


Save Story

Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes

KEY TAKEAWAYS
  • Two men were arrested in suspicion of their involvement with a missing South Jordan teen.
  • Matthew Nicholas Menard, of Miami, Florida, turned himself in to South Jordan authorities.
  • A third man, William Glines, also faces charges while the teen remains missing.

SOUTH JORDAN — Two men have been arrested and jailed in connection with the probe into the April disappearance of a missing South Jordan teen, according to the South Jordan Police Department and jail records.

Police said in a statement late Wednesday night that a Miami, Florida, man, Matthew Nicholas Menard, had turned himself in to South Jordan authorities. Menard, 35, was charged in Utah's 4th District Court in mid-May with aggravated sexual exploitation of a minor, enticing of a minor and criminal solicitation, according to authorities.

"(Menard) over the course of several months, corresponded with (the teen) for the purpose of soliciting sex, sodomy, and child sex abuse material from the minor. (He) discussed in graphic detail his intent to sexually abuse the child. (He) encouraged and engaged with (the teen) all from the state of Florida, where all his substantial ties to the community and resources are. (Menard) has no connection to Utah," the charges state.

Samuel Mitchell, 41, of Herriman, has also been arrested on suspicion of sexual exploitation of a minor, according to the police statement.

Both men are being held at the Salt Lake County jail.

A third man, 37-year-old William Taylor Glines of Texas City, Texas, also faces charges in connection with the probe. On May 12, he was charged in Utah's 4th District Court with two counts of aggravated sexual exploitation of a minor and several others.

Police believe the men communicated with 15-year-old Alisa Petrov on various social media apps before she left school on April 21. She was seen on various security cameras in her travels to Provo that day but has not been seen since.

A search for Petrov, who is classified as an endangered runaway after she walked away from her American Fork school, is ongoing. Police say Petrov had asked multiple people to help her travel to Las Vegas and is believed to be trying to meet up with people she encountered online using multiple social media platforms and chat apps.

Petrov's family is offering a $20,000 reward for information leading to her return. More information can be found online at findalisa.com.

A poster created by Alisa Petrov's family.
A poster created by Alisa Petrov's family. (Photo: findalisa.com)

A probable cause affidavit in Mitchell's case, filed in the 3rd District Court in Salt Lake, however, links the man to Petrov via a series of electronic communications with her in April. Police believe Glines and Menard also communicated with Alisa before she left school on April 21.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

Related stories

Most recent Police & Courts stories

Related topics

UtahPolice & CourtsSalt Lake County
Tim Vandenack covers immigration, multicultural issues and Northern Utah for KSL.com. He worked several years for the Standard-Examiner in Ogden and has lived and reported in Mexico, Chile and along the U.S.-Mexico border.
KSL.com Beyond Business
KSL.com Beyond Series

KSL Weather Forecast

KSL Weather Forecast
Play button