A sentencing hearing was delayed Wednesday until Aug. 8 for a Long Beach man who traveled with a 14-year-old runaway — whom he met in an internet forum — across state lines to his apartment, where he engaged in illicit sexual activity with her.
Trevon Langstaff, 34, pleaded guilty in October 2024 to one federal count of traveling with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Langstaff drove from his Long Beach home to Peoria, Arizona, in March 2024 to pick up the underage victim, according to his plea agreement filed in Los Angeles federal court.
Langstaff knew the girl was 14 and told her to pretend to be 18 years old, prosecutors said.
Intending to have sexual intercourse with her, Langstaff transported the girl from Arizona to his home in Long Beach, where he engaged in sex with her. Prosecutors said that on Langstaff’s phone, law enforcement found an image that appeared to portray two children engaged in sexually explicit activity.
According to an affidavit, law enforcement had received a report of a missing 14-year-old girl. The teen’s family searched for the girl in the neighborhood and reached out to her friends and learned that she had recently said she was planning to run away, court papers show.
The teen also told a friend that she had met a man who harbored runaways and currently had two other teenagers staying with him, and that he would give her a phone and a room in which to stay, the affidavit states.
The victim and Langstaff met on a Reddit internet forum about runaways. A phone record search revealed numerous contacts between the two.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, when law enforcement visited Langstaff’s Long Beach apartment to locate and rescue the victim, the teen was found hidden in a closet.
The teen said she and Langstaff engaged in sexual contact after arriving at his apartment, court papers show.
The defendant will face up to 30 years in federal prison at sentencing, prosecutors noted.