Quick action by several police officers with the Pittsburgh Police Sex Assault and Missing Persons Unit led investigators to the Motel 6 in Pittsburgh Wednesday, where they found Mark Thompkins, 18, of Preston, Maryland and an unnamed 16-year-old girl from Stuebenville, Ohio who had been reported missing early Tuesday by her grandparents, who are the girl’s legal guardians.
According to a court document, the teen told police that she met Thompkins online when she was 15, and the two had been communicating for the past year. The teen also said Thompkins “knew she was 15-years-old at that time,” yet the two continued to communicate.
At some point, according to the court document, the teen’s parents became aware that the two were communicating and her grandparents “forbade her from having any further contact with Thompkins. The 16-year-old female said she continued to talk with Thompkins, in spite of her grandparents wishes.”
The two decided that Thompkins would drive from his home in Maryland and pick-up the teen, which he did at approximately 7:45 a.m. Tuesday.
The teen was entered in the national crime database a short time after her grandparents became aware she left Ohio with Thompkins, who according to Pittsburgh Police spokesperson Emily Schaffer, was driving his father’s vehicle, which was reported stolen.
Shortly after the pair crossed into Pennsylvania, Thompkins received a phone call from an Ohio sheriff telling him to return the teen to Ohio.
The teen told police that she also listened to the message, but the pair “would just continue driving and not return to Ohio or Thompkins’ residence in Maryland,” police alleged in the complaint.
A GPS installed on the vehicle led police to a Motel 6 located a few miles from downtown Pittsburgh where the pair had gotten a room, and “had consensual sex,” the complaint alleges.
A woman who answered the phone at the Motel 6 refused to comment, about whether motel employees had questioned Thompkins as to why he was checking into the motel with a 16-year-old girl, or whether Thompkins or the teen were required to show some type of identification, saying her supervisor “won’t be available until Monday.”
Online court records show Thompkins is charged with kidnapping, corruption of the morals of a minor, interfering with child custody and concealing the teen’s whereabouts. He remains in the Allegheny County jail in lieu of posting a $100,00 bond.
The teen was unharmed and returned to her grandparents, Schaffer said in a news release.
