California man charged with sex trafficking, assaults in Las Vegas
A California man is accused of sex trafficking one woman and kidnapping another in the Las Vegas Valley.
The Southern Nevada Human Trafficking Task Force secured warrants leading to the arrest of Marcus D. Chapman, 34, of Oakland, on Feb. 4. Las Vegas Justice Court records show Chapman is charged with felony sex trafficking of an adult, sex assault with use of a deadly weapon and two counts of kidnapping in what authorities described as assaults on women in the fall of 2019.
An arrest report for Chapman filed by a Metropolitan Police Department detective on the task force said a woman told police she met Chapman while partying with a friend on the Las Vegas Strip in October. The woman told police she’d previously been arrested for soliciting prostitution, but she did not want to work as a prostitute and she only did so “in the past few months to buy clothes for her infant child.”
The woman told police she and her friend agreed to go to a motel with Chapman on Dean Martin Drive. There, she said, she was sexually assaulted and then punched in the head. The woman said her assailant pulled out a firearm, held it to her head and said, “You’re gonna work for me. If you don’t give me all your money, I’ll shoot you,” the report said.
The woman told the man “she did not care if he killed her as she did not feel she had anything to live for.”
A detective conducting an investigation weeks later wrote in Chapman’s arrest report that the room where the assaults occurred was registered to Chapman.
Nearly a month later, two police officers working in the 3300 block of Arville Street said they were approached by another woman shortly after midnight on Nov. 22.
“(She) was crying and holding the left side of her face,” police wrote.
The woman told police that she’d been walking about an hour earlier on the 4600 block of West Tropicana Avenue when a man drove up to her and forced her into the vehicle. He locked the door so she couldn’t get out, the officers said.
Police said the man demanded money from her and forced her to perform a sex act while he drove through the area. The assailant, police said, drove the woman to an area near the intersection of Pennwood Avenue and Arville Street, where she was beaten.
When the assailant saw police officers nearby, he forced the woman out of the vehicle and fled, according to the report.
In January, police said, the woman identified Chapman as her assailant from a photo lineup.
A preliminary hearing for Chapman is scheduled for Feb. 19 in Las Vegas Justice Court. He is being held at the Clark County Detention Center.
Contact Glenn Puit at gpuit@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0390. Follow @GlennatRJ on Twitter.
