Officer: Girl denied having sex
Testimony heard in trafficking case involving minor
An 11-year-old girl called herself a Las Vegas “hustler,” admitting that she drank and flirted with men in Strip casinos, according to courtroom testimony Thursday.
She told a social worker with the Clark County Department of Family Services that she smoked cigarettes and entered nightclubs with Gigi Mitchell, a 40-year-old woman facing sex trafficking and child abuse charges.
The girl said she sold “flower pens” to men they encountered in casinos for anywhere from $10 to $1,500, but she denied having sex with them, Michael Amburgey, an officer with the Metropolitan Police Department’s child exploitation task force, told Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Harmony Letizia.
But social worker Felicia Tucker testified that the girl told her: “We’re not prostitutes.”
Mitchell wiped tears from her eyes as Tucker testified during a lengthy hearing to determine whether a jury should hear the charges against Mitchell, who is being held on $500,000 bail and is due back in court next month for a continuation of the hearing.
The girl has been taken in by Child Protective Services.
Amburgey testified that the girl admitted approaching men on casino floors at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, Bellagio, New York-new York, Paris Las Vegas and Stratosphere to “make them feel comfortable and sometimes go along with what they were saying.”
She told police she would accompany Mitchell and the men to hotel rooms “to get more money,” and Mitchell would give the men massages while she was “on her phone.”
Amburgey said he confronted Mitchell about a video that showed the girl kissing a man inside a car while Mitchell was sitting nearby.
Mitchell told the officer “she’s not ready,” according to a recording of her interview, played in court. “She’s too young.”
Metro officers working at The Cosmopolitan in the early hours of
March 2 spotted Mitchell and the girl approaching men in the casino while the girl wore a “tight-fitting” white