08/08/2024
Ready for another cool God story? There's a reason I call this "Spirit-led human hunting."
We hunted for a girl for weeks in the Fayetteville area. It was a giant pain in the tuckus for my team. Her people kept telling us she was there, working in the hotels off Cedar Creek. At one point John called me and said "ummmm ... I need a hotel room so I can get a pr0stitute" 🤣 but they never turned up anything because she simply wasn't there.
We decided we were going to push the search out to the Charlotte/Concord area because that's where she's from and her people were saying if she's not in FAY she's over there.
It's a big area so all 3 of us were going to go and show her pic and visit certain people, hotels, and homeless camps. My plan was to wake up, drive over there fairly early, and start visiting people she knew.
Instead, God woke me up at 4am like a shot with the words, "SLOW DOWN." I knew it was relative to this case, so I made some coffee and prayed.
Then I went through every piece of intel we had and looked at it again. Ran new searches. Ran searches off the searches. Finally, I ran a search on the phone numbers in a different way than I'd done before and voila ... she's advertising on a certain website from Virginia Beach. That's a long ways from Charlotte!
Double-searched and found other ads from there. Threw on some clothes, called the team to move on to a different case, and headed north.
Virginia's a strange state to hunt in; we're extremely limited in what we can do there unless licensed in Virginia. And by that, I mean that we can basically do NOTHING.
I posted & texted numerous people for help and my AMAZING friend Duncan Williams at my AMAZING surety, Lexington National Insurance Corporation, sent me a number for Dexter Radcliffe in Newport News, who immediately hooked me up with Fonzzy Hogue. I explained my situation and I've never had someone move so fast on a case in my life.
Shannon was on the horn with the Stanly County Clerk getting the warrant (million thanks to them for digging it up and sending it so quickly!) and Fonzzy had our girl set up within 30 minutes of our first conversation. He got a hotel room and waited.
The problem is, she didn't show ... and didn't show ... and didn't show ... and didn't show 🤣 He sat in that room and even came & went a few times to handle other things, and I sat in the bank parking lot across the street until my butt was numb and she still didn't show ... until she did.
Her boyfriend/pimp dropped her off and she came walking up, they went in the room, cuffs went on and he called. All those hours of waiting resolved in under ten seconds. He drove her to the border for me and I took her the rest of the way to Sampson County (she had charges in multiple counties & that one was closest). Still almost a 4 hour drive.
She told me when I put her in my car that she was going to be dope sick because she hadn't had any fentanyl yet that day. She was coming to sell herself so she could buy some. If you've never seen dope sickness before, it's extremely violent vomiting, diarrhea, pain, chills and fever. There's a reason why an addict will fight for their fix; they even call it "getting well".
Turns out that her "people" were lying to us all along. They knew she was in Virginia Beach, and even gave her the phone numbers we contacted her from so she'd know if we were trying to set her up. The pimp was screening her calls to make sure nothing was a set-up. He seemed more surprised than she was when she went into handcuffs. That game only works so long, guys.
Well ... this young lady and I had some great conversation on that long car ride about Jesus, healing, and freedom. Then she laid her head back with her eyes closed. At first I thought she was sleeping, then I realized she was concentrating on breathing slowly. She'd decided that she likes me, and didn't want to puke in my car.
We finally got to the jail & I knew she was feeling very, very unwell so I rushed her out of the car and it hit her. Absolutely uncontrollable vomiting. Magistrate wouldn't even let her in to see him; we processed her straight to the back.
Here's the next miracle - I laid hands on her as she was hurling in the parking lot and commanded the sickness to stop - and she stopped hurling and was able to walk a few steps at a time until we got her into the jail. I've never seen anything quite like that before! Unfortunately it returned when we got inside but next time I pray for someone in that position there'll be more specifics and I'm sure God will do something even more amazing!
The third miracle is that nobody's bonded her out. All the local bondsmen know not to touch her because she likely won't be found again.
Dope sickness usually lasts a few days and then the psychological cravings need to be addressed. She wasn't ready to accept Jesus on the car ride home, but I gave her a lot to think about and I prayed (and am still praying) for Him to meet her there in that jail cell and transform her.
The moral of the story, for fellow human hunting friends, is if you get a nudge, a feeling, a word ... put the brakes on and figure out what it means before you proceed with plans. Sometimes it'll save your life and sometimes it'll save your wallet and sometimes it'll just make life easier. But God IS working and He DOES care about our cases!
