A Florida motel owner is being lauded as a hero by police after his quick thinking helped rescue two young girls who were reportedly being sex trafficked.
Richard Baron owns the Lago Motor Inn motel in Lake Worth Beach, Fl., which is about 10 miles south of West Palm Beach.
He told CBS-12 that last Sunday at 6 a.m., 44-year-old Ricardo Flores checked in alone.
About 30 minutes later, Baron heard an argument coming from Flores’ room, so he went to check it out. A woman named Maria Barrios Calero was in the room too.
“[Flores] opened the door, and then I see two young women, girls sitting in the middle of the bed,” Baron alleged to the outlet. “[Calero] says to me, ‘He has to pay, he didn’t pay.’ I don’t know what happened between them.”
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Baron noticed that the girls looked scared. He also saw a condom on the floor next to Flores.
In a released statement, police identified Calero, 44, as the person who allegedly set up a “date” between Flores and the two minor victims.
A motel owner is required to report suspicious activity of child exploitation or forced prostitution. Baron immediately called the police.
The police arrived just as Calero was leaving with the two young girls, complaining that Flores did not pay her.
Flores and Calero were taken into custody by police. Calero was charged with three counts of human trafficking of a minor with a $750,000 bond. Flores, meanwhile, was charged with two counts of human trafficking of a minor with a $500,000 bond.
“The swift intervention of the hotel clerk, who noticed the young victims and alerted authorities, played a pivotal role in their rescue,” the sheriff’s office said on social media.
They called Baron a “local hero.”
“I’m not a hero. I’m just doing my job. I try to help somebody always if I can,” Baron said. “But in this situation, I think the real hero is the [deputy] who discovered what’s really going on over there.”
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