Man accused of arranging sexual meet-up with who he thought was a 13-year-old girl

LOWER BURRELL, Pa. — A man who allegedly tried to have sex with a person he thought was a teenage girl came face-to-face with a “predator catcher” in Lower Burrell.

David Holmes, 54, is accused of arranging a sexual meet-up with a 13-year-old girl. The incident was recorded by Shafiq Blake, the man who runs the “Predator Catchers PA” Facebook and Instagram pages.

The video shows the interaction between Blake and Holmes in February.

Blake and “PCI: Predator Catchers Indianapolis” used a decoy, pretending to be a 13-year-old girl, to catch Holmes.

“He was hitting up the decoy for a while,” Blake told Channel 11′s Andrew Havranek. “He believed she was 13.”

“I didn’t want to do anything,” Holmes said in the video. “I wanted to see if she was real. That was it”

But, Blake and police say Holmes wanted to have sex with the girl.

“He made first contact and he was asking to meet, said a bunch of explicit stuff, asked for explicit pics,” Blake said.

When Blake went to call police, Holmes started to run away. After a brief chase, Blake stopped, then police arrived. They took the information, launched their own investigation and went to Holmes’ house

According to court documents, police got warrants to check his iPhone and iPad. On those devices, they found messages not only to the decoy, named Zoey, but also to another 13-year-old girl on Instagram.

Police say Holmes talked about sexual acts with the teen, sent nude pictures of himself, received explicit pictures from the girl, and saved them.

Now Holmes faces 28 charges of child porn, one count of unlawful contact with a minor, and corruption of minors.

Blake is glad the police continued to investigate.

“I was definitely glad to hear that because I didn’t think anything was going to happen,” Blake told Havranek.

Holmes is being held in the Westmoreland County Prison tonight on a $250,000 bond. He’s due in court on April 9.

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