Felony charnes in prostitution case
Police: 11-year-old told men she was hooker
An 11-year-old girl boasted of smoking cigarettes and drinking booze on the Strip, and she told men she was a prostitute, according to police.
Now the 40-year-old woman prosecutors allege brought the girl to Las Vegas is charged with sex trafficking and child abuse.
In a brief court appearance Friday morning, Gigi Mitchell clasped her hands at her waist and choked back tears as Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Harmony Letizia told Mitchell she faces a preliminary hearing next month on seven felony charges.
The girl, who admitted to drinking and smoking with Mitchell in casinos, has been taken in by child protective services.
Metropolitan Police Department officers working at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas in the early morning hours of March 2 spotted Mitchell and the girl approaching men in the casino, while the girl wore a “tight-fitting” white floral dress and black high heels, according to an arrest report.
When the two were initially questioned by police, they gave what officers believed were “rehearsed” answers, the report said.
Mitchell told investigators she and the girl were “selling flower pens” and went to The Cosmopolitan for breakfast.
Mitchell initially told police she had just met the men. Later she said they were cousins named Brandon and Justin, or Randy and Gary.
The girl, identified in the arrest report as “victim 1,” told police she and Mitchell had driven to Las Vegas from Arizona around the time of the Super Bowl in early February and had stayed at various hotels along the Strip.
The morning in early March that police found the girl and Mitchell inside The Cosmopolitan, they were seen approaching eight different men within 45 minutes. “Not one time did Gigi Mitchell or victim 1 approach a female guest,” the report said.
“Gigi Mitchell is seen holding flower pens and claimed she and (victim 1) were only trying to sell these pens. It appears to (police) that Gigi Mitchell and victim 1 are using the flower pens as a cover to hide the activity of prostitution.”
The girl later told investigators that she and Mitchell sold pens to men for “anywhere from $10 to $1,500,” according to the report.
She said she and Mitchell would sometimes go to hotel rooms with men “because they would have more money up there … Sometimes these men think they are going to do ‘bad stuff ’ so they have more money but that she would never do that stuff … When these men would try to have them do stuff, they would just ‘ditch them’ and leave the room.”
Mitchell is being held at the
Clark County Detention Center on $500,000 bail.
Contact David Ferrara at dferrara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039. Follow @randompoker on Twitter.