Missing Louisiana teenager found in sheet-covered box in basement of Pittsburgh home, police say

A teenage girl reported missing in Louisiana was found in a basement in Pittsburgh’s Brighton Heights neighborhood, police said.  

Neighbors say they heard police executing a search warrant at a home on Davis Avenue shortly after 7 p.m. on Thursday. That’s when police say they found the 13-year-old girl in a box covered with a sheet in the basement of the home.

Pittsburgh SWAT officers executed the search warrant and arrested 26-year-old Ki-Shawn Crumity, who police say kept the girl in the basement for days.

U.S. Marshals say this was part of a week-long investigation that began in Louisiana, when police there contacted the marshals for help in locating the missing girl. That investigation led them to Columbus, Georgia, where they arrested 62-year-old Ronald Smith.

Police say Smith and another man brought the girl from Baton Rouge to Georgia and then put her on a bus to Pittsburgh. A criminal complaint says the missing girl was then seen at a bus station in Washington, D.C., with a woman.

Police say the woman offered to help the girl then accompanied her to Pittsburgh and to Crumity’s house on Davis Avenue, where police say the three of them slept in the same bed in the basement. Police say Crumity had met the girl on Snapchat and told her that he would arrange for her to be adopted by a trusted adult.

Police say Crumity provided the girl with alcohol and edibles on the first day in the house. Crumity allegedly went on to have sex with the girl multiple times over a few days.

On Thursday, Pittsburgh police received a ChildLine report from the U.S. Marshals about the missing girl and then located her at Crumity’s house.

Crumity is in the Allegheny County Jail on multiple charges, including trafficking, sexual assault and corruption of a minor.