MIAMI — Some of the threats that a 37-year-old man made to force a 20-year-old woman into prostitution included killing her with Haitian Vodou, according to Miami police.
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A police officer fluent in Haitian Creole helped a Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office human trafficking task force investigator and a Miami detective to communicate with the victim, records show.
She was in the emergency room at Mount Sinai Hospital, where she had been receiving treatment for injuries after a crash involving an RV, according to police.
“The victim explained he was not like this at the beginning, but for the last couple of months,” a detective wrote, according to the police arrest report.
Police officers arrested Joanel “Tyson” Herard on Thursday morning at North Miami Avenue and 79 Street near his home in Miami’s Little River neighborhood, according to a police report.
The woman reported she had met Herard, 37, “a few months ago,” was in a “romantic relationship with him” that seemed “normal at first” until he forced her into prostitution to use the “money for food, marijuana, and dope … would not allow her to keep any” and “would punch her and beat her up,” according to police.
Herard admitted “he sells weed on the streets,” was “having a sexual relationship with her,” and he “wanted to scare her and intimidate her,” but he denied “selling her for money,” according to police.
A detective found a video stored in Herard’s cell phone showing an argument between him and the victim where he used expletives, according to a police report.
“Want to die, like, I told you, I am going to Voodoo, I am going to sell you for money for Haiti, and I am going to trade you for money,” Herard told the victim during the recording of the video, according to police.
Herard faced three charges: Human trafficking for commercial sexual activity via coercion, deriving support from the proceeds of prostitution, and battery. A judge denied him bail for the human trafficking charge. His bond for the other charges was $8,500.
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