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LAS VEGAS » A former Oklahoma police officer is facing felony kidnapping and statutory sex charges following his arrest at a Las Vegas Strip hotel with a 15-year-old girl who disappeared from a family member’s home in California, authorities said Friday.
Danniel Boone Morgan II, 30, was fired Thursday by the town board in Kiowa, Oklahoma, hours after his arrest in Las Vegas, said John Thomas, the Kiowa city attorney.
Morgan had been sought on a kidnapping warrant issued Wednesday in Turlock, California, said Officer Michael Rodriguez, a Las Vegas police spokesman.
Morgan was being held without bail at the Clark County jail pending an initial court appearance in Nevada on kidnapping and statutory sexual seduction charges, according to jail records. It was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer who could comment on the charges.
The girl was examined at a Las Vegas hospital, but she didn’t show signs of physical injury, Rodriguez said. She was being returned to her family.
Kidnapping carries a possible sentence of life in prison in Nevada, and a conviction of a person older than 21 for statutory sexual seduction of someone under 16 carries a possible five-year sentence.
The girl’s father, who lives in Bakersfield, California, told NBC affiliate KSNV-TV in Las Vegas that his daughter lives with her mother in Oklahoma, but was visiting him when she told him she had been dating Morgan since she was 14.
The father said he took the girl to stay with her grandmother in Turlock, California, but she disappeared.
Morgan and the girl were found less than a day after Turlock police issued a public request to help find them.
Efforts by The Associated Press to reach the father on Friday weren’t immediately successful.
