Maybe it's the meltdown of the California economy. Maybe they heard about Rick Perry's alleged Texas miracle. Whatever the reason, the Lone Star State appears to be undergoing a plague of transplanted pimps from Southern California. Must just be hard out there for 'em or something.
The first case is set in Houston. Yesterday HPD arrested 22-year-old Kojuan Miles and charged him with both pimping out and sexually assaulting a girl between the ages of 14 and 17. The 6-2, 270-pound Miles has roots in the Houston area but starred in football in Sylmar, California, and went on to play for California's Mount San Antonio College.
His gridiron dreams apparently dashed, Miles seems to have decided to try to take his talents to another arena. "Da game been good to me," he Facebooked last month, but we imagine if he gets convicted for the sexual assault, that new career might just be stillborn. Nothing would seem to put a crimp in your (alleged) pimp game like a lifetime stay on the sex offender registry.
Miles is being held in Harris County Jail with a combined bond of $40,000 for charges of sexual assault of a child and compelling the prostitution of a minor, a first-degree felony.
Our second case takes us to the capital city. There, police say 23-year-old Sharod Willie Austin spent much of a recent road trip with a casual girlfriend beating her and attempting to turn her out on the track.
The horrific odyssey began in Bakersfield, California, where Austin, his cousin and the woman boarded Amtrak's Sunset Limited and headed east. As they were crossing Arizona, things turned nasty. According to an arrest affidavit, Austin told the woman they were broke and she would have to start turning some tricks on the train.
The woman refused and Austin allegedly beat her. She later told police that she tried to call for help but couldn't get cell reception from the train, and Austin was watching her the whole time to boot.
The trio arrived in Austin on October 6. On October 12, according to the affidavit, Austin again attempted to flex his pimp brawn. In a rage, he allegedly ordered the woman to perform sex acts "with rich guys." The woman told him she "would rather eat rat poison and die."
Austin countered that she would do as she was told, if for no other reason than, as the affidavit put it, ""he was God and she had no power." Austin then allegedly composed an ad touting the woman's services and put it on the Internet.
And then at some point after that, Austin and his cousin got shitfaced drunk. That was when the woman was able to make her escape. She managed at last to reach her sister in California, who called local cops, who in turn called Austin cops, who raided the trio's room at South Austin's Park West Inn.
On the scene, she told police that she was to have sex with a man the next day on Austin's orders. She refused and said she would kill herself, she said, whereupon Austin allegedly beat and choked her.
Austin denied everything. Nevertheless, he is being held on $91,000 bond at the Travis County Jail, facing felony charges of compelling prostitution and assault by strangulation.
