{"id":24028,"date":"2025-10-28T18:24:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T18:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/24028\/"},"modified":"2025-10-28T18:24:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T18:24:07","slug":"4-charged-in-st-pete-child-sex-sting-crime-crashes-and-fires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/24028\/","title":{"rendered":"4 charged in St. Pete child sex sting | Crime, Crashes and Fires"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ST. PETERSBURG \u2014 Four men were arrested after police say they traveled to meet who they believed were children for sex.<\/p>\n<p>City police detectives conducted an undercover operation called &#8220;Spooky Surprise,&#8221; in which they posed as 14- and 15-year-old boys and girls in online chat rooms and on websites used for human trafficking and connecting with minors.<\/p>\n<p>The men chatted with detectives they believed were children, agreed to meet for sex and drove to a designated location, where they were arrested, police said.<\/p>\n<p>Thomas Ray Hill, 55, faces charges of human trafficking, traveling to meet a minor and unlawful use of a two-way communications device.<\/p>\n<p>Mathias Padilla, 44, was charged with traveling to meet a minor, unlawful use of a two-way communications device and seduction of a child using the internet or an electronic device.<\/p>\n<p>Tahquill Battle, 28, faces charges of traveling to meet a minor and unlawful use of a two-way communications device.<\/p>\n<p>Brandon Farrow, 32, was charged with traveling to meet a minor, transmission of harmful material to a minor and unlawful use of a two-way communications device.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG \u2014 Four men were arrested after police say they traveled to meet who they believed were&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[18402,18403,202,204,203,199,201,200,18405,18404],"class_list":["post-24028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-child-sex-sting","tag-juvenile-abuse","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-st-petersburg-police","tag-thomas-ray-hill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}