Man accused of traveling from Oregon to sexually assault local minor

Police allege a 26-year-old Oregon man traveled more than 2,000 miles to engage in a sexual acts with a minor at a Springfield hotel, resulting in several felony charges.

Sergio Lopez, 26, faces criminal counts in Greene County for statutory rape, statutory sodomy, child kidnapping and child molestation, after reportedly picking up a 13-yearold Ozarks girl in his car and taking her to Battlefield Inn, where the alleged sexual assault occurred.

Lopez is accused of posing as a 16year-old boy under a fake name when he and the victim first cultivated a relationship through the internet. The victim's mother alerted Webster County Sheriff 's Office in January that Lopez and her daughter had exchanged explicit photos on a social media app, and indicated in text messages that the two recently engaged in physical contact in Springfield.

In a forensic interview last month at the Greene County Child Advocacy Center, the victim accused Lopez, who said he lived in St. Louis, of taking her to the hotel and initiating the sexual physical contact. She said, according to a police report, that Lopez asked if the GPS on her phone was turned off because he was worried her parents would find her location.

A police report said that Greene County and Webster County detectives used subpoenas to get information from the company Snapchat to try to identify and locate the man posing as the teen boy. They also reportedly used booking information at Battlefield Inn hotel, and tracked the IP address he used while on the hotel's internet.

The investigating agencies said they were able determine that the man, using the online alias of David Leon, was Lopez, who lived in the southwest Oregon city of Medford where has out on bond for drug-related crime.

"The defendant has shown he will go to great lengths to gain access to a minor victim and therefore poses an imminent danger to both the victim and to the community," the March 7 police report read.

It's unclear if Lopez has been arrested or detained for the alleged Springfield crime. The Oregon address on Lopez's driver's license was vacant, according to police, and he was recently issued a travel permit from the Oregon county to visit Rio De Janeiro, Brazil on March 8 to return on June 21.