A Seattle-area preschool teacher aboard a recent flight managed to help police save two young children after noticing a male passenger in front of her texting about sexually abusing them.
The woman, who has asked not to be identified, is being hailed by the police as a hero. She was on a flight from Seattle to San Jose on Monday on Southwest Airlines when she noticed the man in front of her sending inappropriate texts on his smartphone.
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As he held the phone in front of his face, the large font was within her line of sight and the woman noticed the text conversation swiftly escalate from sexual fetishes to far more disturbing topics.
“[The text] was in large font, and she sees certain words and starts contemplating there’s something bigger there,” San Jose sex-crimes Detective Nick Jourdenais said while talking to Mercury News. “Then the conversation transitions to children. That’s the moment when she decided to preserve the evidence as best as she could.”
The woman snapped photos of the texts with her own smartphone and then quietly alerted the flight crew.
The crew then contacted the San Jose police and its airport division stationed at Mineta San Jose International Airport.
“Kudos to his young lady. She went a step further,” Sgt. Brian Spears, commander of the SJPD Internet Crimes Against Children task force said. “Without us responding right away, he would have been lost.”
When the plane landed, 56-year-old Tacoma resident Michael Kellar was arrested. The suspect was interviewed by law enforcement officials in which he freely consented to a search of his phone.
Kellar dismissed the text messages as role-playing and fantasy.
The Seattle detectives alongside FBI agents from the area used the smartphone evidence to locate a home in Tacoma where the woman Kellar had been texting lived. The woman was identified as 50-year-old Gail Burnworth.
Despite Kellar’s claims, the law enforcement agents discovered that the case was more than outlandish texts.
Two children of the ages 5 and 7 lived at the home and were being sexually abused.
The investigators are contending that Kellar was making sexual requests for the children and that Burnworth was carrying them out.
Kellar was booked into the Santa Clara County Main Jail on the suspicion of two felony counts of solicitation of a sex crime and attempted child molestation.
Burnworth was booked at the Pierce County jail in Washington on suspicion of felony counts of dealing in depictions of a minor engaged in a sexually explicit conduct, sexual exploitation of a minor and rape of a child.
“It’s kind of mind-blowing,” Jourdenais said. “She gets on a plane, a normal citizen minding her business. A couple of hours later, she’s intervening on quite possibly the most traumatic thing children can go through. This was life-altering for them.”
“We always preach ‘If you see something, say something.’ It was apparent to her to say something. She wasn’t going to take this home,” he said. “She sees herself as a guardian and protector. It should be acknowledged.”
