Nearly two years ago a Fort Bragg teen made national news when she went missing in San Francisco after meeting up with an adult male that she had been communicating with on Instagram. The Northern District of California’s Department of Justice announced in a press release yesterday that the man the Fort Bragg teen was found with, 23-year-old King John Baylon Asuncion, stood in front of a federal judge in San Francisco facing a criminal complaint charging him with the coercion and enticement of a minor.
The press release outlined the charges that Baylon has been charged with: “persuading, coercing, or enticing a person younger than 18 years old to engage in a sexual activity, which includes the production of child pornography, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2422(b).” If convicted of those crimes, Baylon faces “a minimum mandatory sentence of 10 years to a maximum of life in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000.” Baylon stood before United States Magistrate Sallie Kim and remains in custody.
The press release identified Yoosun Koh as the Assistant U.S. Attorney who is prosecuting the case assisted by Senna Milstead. The investigatory agencies that assisted in bringing the charges against Baylon include the University of California, San Francisco, Police Department, and the San Francisco Police Department, and with assistance from the Los Angeles Police Department.
To protect the teen from being further victimized, we have chosen to leave her name out of this piece.
At 3:30 p.m. on Friday, January 3rd, 2020 the 13-year-old teenager left UCSF’s Madison Clinic for Pediatric Diabetes telling her mother and grandmother she was sick and needed to get some air. She never returned.
A San Francisco restaurant server working on the corner of Van Ness Avenue on Redwood Street that afternoon told us while on break she watched “this little tiny person” shivering in the alley near where she worked. The server told us she invited the girl inside the restaurant and grew concerned that a young girl was seemingly alone in the city.
At approximately 6:30 pm, the girl abruptly left the restaurant, and “following my gut” the server chose to pursue. The young woman walked quickly and met a man, they embraced and walked off on foot. The server observed the pair meticulously “to make sure that no matter what, I could identify them again”.
On Saturday, January 4th, a co-worker forwarded the server a screenshot of a Facebook post that described a missing girl from Fort Bragg, California. She knew immediately upon seeing the post that the young woman she had taken care of Friday night was, in fact, the 13-year-old missing girl from Fort Bragg.
On Sunday, January 5, 2021, the pair were found at the San Francisco Ferry Building where the San Francisco Police Department arrested 22-year-old King John Baylon for charges including kidnapping and possession of child pornography.
An employee for the Bay Area Rapid Transit System told us on January 9, 2021, that he had encountered Baylon and the teen the Sunday morning before they were located by San Francisco Police.
He had found the pair attempting to evade paying their tolls and at one point sensed the teen was in danger asking here “What are you doing with him?” The girl responded, “I’m visiting my mom.” Sanchez then warned the girl that “you need to be careful, he’s going to get you in trouble. He’s going to get you to do things that you aren’t supposed to be doing.”
Clearly uncomfortable, the girl nervously “adjusted her jacket, and under her scarf, she had a hickey on her neck.” It was at that moment that Sanchez said he “knew she was too young.”
In an astounding turn of events, later that evening Elizabeth Fernandez, a spokesperson for the University of California in San Francisco, notified us that the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office would be “setting aside” the 18 felonies and the one misdemeanor charge against then 22-year-old King John Baylon “pending further investigation into the case.”
Since Baylon’s arrest and release in January 2020, the circumstances have been used to demonstrate the extent of controversial San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin’s what some consider a soft-on-crime approach. Susan Dyer Reynolds, in a piece published in the Marina Times entitled, “Chesa Boudin by the numbers,” said Bayon was “released by Boudin, who set aside all charges pending further investigation.” Reynolds wrote between his release from San Francisco and his recent return, Baylon was “Sitting in a Los Angeles jail cell on a warrant for GBI (great bodily injury) and charged with carrying a loaded firearm in public. The FBI has also placed a hold on him.”
However, nearly two years later, the federal Department of Justice has taken up the case and Baylon could face life in prison for the actions he stands accused of.
We have reached out to David Joseph Sutton, Baylon’s defense attorney, and have not heard back. He will appear before Magistrate Kim this Friday for a detention hearing.
gotta love chesa boudin…NOT
That girl is my wife’s cousin and I hope that pos gets at least the 10 years mandatory. So thankful to the waitress and everyone else who helped bring her home.