Ankle monitoring device used to track Kingman teen to sex offender’s Utah basement

KINGMAN, AZ (3TV/CBS 5) -- The Mohave County Probation Office says an ankle monitoring device led them to a 14-year-old girl in the basement of a registered sex offender. They confirm the teen is on probation and was wearing that device for hours after being kidnapped.

Jordan Sorenson, 26, was arrested and charged with rape and aggravated kidnapping. Probation officials confirm the girl was first reported missing by her father on the morning of January 28. However, the teen left the night before.

Court documents show Sorenson began commenting on the teen’s TikTok videos. They continued talking over Snapchat. The documents show Sorenson offered to have food delivered to the victim’s home, and that’s when she gave him her address.

Sorenson is accused of driving over eight hours from his home in Utah to meet her. “This whole case is very tragic and not something we want to see any of our kids go through,” said DeShae Fangmeyer, Deputy Probation Officer Senior. Fangmeyer oversees probation officers in the Kingman area. She explained the teen’s father reported her missing. “If she didn’t have this ankle monitoring device on, we never would have found her,” she said.

Fangmeyer and her officers used the data from that ankle monitoring device to check out places they’d been and ultimately get surveillance video. “We were able to visibly see her getting in and out of the car. So we knew that was the car she was in,” she said. “We were able to get a full make and model of the vehicle she exited and entered.” They used that information to determine she was with Sorenson, a registered sex offender on probation himself. Law enforcement raided his home, finding the teen in the basement.

Mohave County said about 15 teens on probation currently have an ankle monitoring device. Right now, there are 150 teens on probation. They explained they’ve used the devices for teens for over a decade. Compared to adults, Mohave County said there are 30 in use, with more than 1,000 adults on probation. “We use them throughout the whole case, sometimes we’ll have youth that are pending court, as part of their conditional release,” Fangmeyer said. “Most kids won’t have them on forever but it’s not uncommon for a kid to have an ankle monitor on for a month to two to three,” she continued.

In this case, Fangmeyer couldn’t say what the teen was on probation for because she’s underage. It could be a felony or a misdemeanor. She said the girl kept the device on for hours after she met Sorenson. They then received an alert that it had been cut off. “We’re very fortunate everything played out the way it did,” Fangmeyer said. “We have girls and boys that have been put in a similar situation that we’ve confirmed they’re trafficked and they’re gone for years at a time,” she continued.

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