When Thomas Gentile answered the phone on May 13, he thought it was going to be like other calls he was used to getting at all hours of the night.<\/p>\n
A child was in trouble and needed rescuing.<\/p>\n
Gentile is a professional martial arts fighter and part of a network of people who rescue children and women from human traffickers. Most recently, he was part of a group that rescued a 12-year-old boy in Oklahoma<\/a>.<\/p>\n
He said that Lisa Bownds and Elizabeth Walker of Reflection Ministries told him he needed to rescue a baby from her mother, DeAmber Brown, in the Dallas area.<\/p>\n He enlisted Pete \u201cDoc\u201d Chambers, a former Green Beret also does anti-trafficking rescues through Remnant Ministry \u2014 another anti-human trafficking group. Chambers also recently ran unsuccessfully against Gov. Greg Abbott in the Republican primary for governor.<\/p>\n What Gentile and Chambers said they didn\u2019t know at the time, but later learned, was that Brown was not a danger to her baby.<\/p>\n Brown had just lived through a five-month ordeal starting in November 2025 with her arrival at Midland\u2019s Reflection Ministries, which took her in as a former human trafficking survivor. It ended with her locked up and her baby in the custody of Reflection Ministries founder Lisa Bownds. Brown eventually won her daughter back in April after a court fight \u2013 but she still felt uneasy.<\/p>\n “They’re obsessed with trying to get my baby back still,\u201d she told WFAA.<\/p>\n In the weeks that followed, her fears turned out to be justified, according to police.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are experts at… finding things, needles in a stack of needles,\u201d Chambers said.<\/p>\n \u201cI’ll go anywhere in the world to rescue a child,\u201d Gentile said.<\/p>\n Both men sat down with WFAA to tell the story of how they were asked to track down Brown and her baby by the leaders of Reflection Ministries. Details of their account are detailed in police affidavits filed in court.<\/p>\n Gentile said Lisa Bownds told him that Brown \u201cwas endangering the baby and that we needed to recover the baby.\u201d<\/p>\n Court records show Bownds and Walker had traveled from Midland and met with Gentile and his associates in eastern Dallas County.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was insinuated that the baby was in danger in the hotel room while she was at work. That she could be there unattended or with \u2018a pimp,\u2019\u201d Gentile said.<\/p>\n He says Bownds said Brown was a stripper \u2014 claiming she was trying to sell her baby, \u201cchop it up\u201d or put it down a garbage disposal.<\/p>\n “The baby was in that much danger,\u201d Gentile said he and Chambers were told.<\/p>\n He said his main point of contact for the operation was Lisa Bownds.<\/p>\n
Lisa Bownds founded Reflection Ministries in 2016. Bownds has publicly said she survived human trafficking while in college in North Texas<\/a>.<\/p>\n She’s also married to a prominent Midland banking executive.<\/p>\n In 2019, the ministry built a housing complex known as \u201cThe Village\u201d to give trafficking survivors a place to stay.<\/p>\n In a year, the ministry\u2019s revenue more than tripled \u2014 growing from $2.6 million in 2023 to nearly $9 million in 2024, according to the most recently available IRS filings.<\/p>\n
Based on what Bownds told them, Gentile and his team began surveilling Dallas-area gentlemen\u2019s clubs, searching for Brown.<\/p>\n “She wasn’t working there,\u201d Chambers said. \u201cShe hadn’t been working in that business…She’s a mom working at an all-night caf\u00e9 trying to make ends meet.\u201d<\/p>\n Gentile said that Bownds told him that she had legal custody of Brown\u2019s baby.<\/p>\n “She provided documentation, but even the documents we saw were the the judge\u2019s court ordered rewarding the child back to DeAmber,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Bownds and her husband had filed for legal custody in Midland two months earlier. A Midland judge ruled against them.<\/p>\n Bownds \u201cwould make comments to us that that baby was going to leave with her, that she had the right to have that baby,\u201d Gentile told WFAA.<\/p>\n Gentile says they explained that\u2019s not how they operate \u2014 that they work with law enforcement and CPS and would request a welfare check.<\/p>\n But there was something else bothering them.<\/p>\n “Lisa was pretty intent on us finding something to get DeAmber thrown in jail,\u201d Gentile said. \u201cWe’ve told her that’s not our avenue. We are not here as private investigators. We’re here to recover the safety of a child … She was on repeat the whole time.”<\/p>\n By the time the men approached Brown at work, they say they no longer believed Bownds or Walker.<\/p>\n “So, I just asked if we could have five minutes of her time, and then pretty much that we knew about a situation going on with a crazy lady after her child,\u201d Gentile said.<\/p>\n Hours later, Gentile said he met with Bownds and Walker again.<\/p>\n \u201cAll I did was told them that we have proof that the baby’s safe and doing well and we’re bowing out,\u201d he said. \u201cThey weren’t very happy with that.\u201d<\/p>\n Brown said she is currently hiding.<\/p>\n \u201cThe number one thing is keeping baby safe,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cI don’t know what the ultimate end game was for Reflection Ministries and\/or Ms. Bownds and\/or Ms. Walker,\u201d said Anthony Reed, Brown\u2019s attorney.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy would you go through all that trouble?\u201d he said. \u201cThere has to be something bigger.\u201d<\/p>\n
On June 2, Lisa Bownds was arrested in Midland County<\/a> on suspicion of attempted kidnapping of a child in Dallas. The next day, Walker was arrested in Houston County<\/a> accused of the same crime. Bownds was released on $150,000 bond, and Walker was released on $100,000 bond.<\/p>\n In late June, WFAA briefly spoke to Bownds outside the Reflection Ministries offices in Midland. \u201cThank you so much for being here, but you\u2019ll have to talk to my attorney.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt is said that no good deed goes unpunished. This matter is a perfect example,\u201d Bownds attorney, John Helms, said in a statement. \u201cThis investigation has been infected with false and unreasonable assumptions and, in some cases, simple misunderstandings that investigators failed to understand. There was no attempted kidnapping, but because this has escalated to the point of arrests, we will look forward to vindication in court.\u201d<\/p>\n Walker\u2019s lawyer, Brandi Young, said that given the pending criminal charges, Walker would not be giving interviews or making public statements.<\/p>\n \u201cAs this matter is currently before the courts, it would be inappropriate to comment outside of the proper legal proceedings,\u201d Young wrote. \u201cWe look forward to defending Ms. Walker and are confident in the outcome of these proceedings will give an accurate account of the events surrounding these circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n In arrest affidavits written by an investigator with the North Texas Human Trafficking Unit, investigators allege Walker told Gentile “they normally adopt the babies out.”<\/p>\n A former Reflection Ministries employee told investigators that he met a couple at Elizabeth Walker\u2019s house in December who said they were donors to the ministry \u2013 and that they were supposed to adopt Brown\u2019s baby.<\/p>\n He showed investigators this text from Walker: \u201cPlease pray! This can\u2019t be shared, but we are in the middle of recovery efforts on recovering the baby from a trafficking ring.\u201d<\/p>\n It was sent May 12, the day before Thomas Gentile said he was dispatched to \u201crescue\u201d Brown\u2019s baby.<\/p>\n On June 11, investigators searched Reflection Ministries downtown Midland office for evidence tied to human trafficking, fraud, and money laundering, court documents show. Court documents show they seized three single-space pages of items, including a dozen computers, 32 empty pill bottles, several cell phones, multiple hard drives and digital storage devices, resident EBT and debit cards, along with dozens of boxes of resident, employee, payroll, financial, grant and victim records. They also seized records related to donations made to the nonprofit.<\/p>\n They also searched the ministry\u2019s Village housing complex, seizing two computers, medication logs and files and a remote monitoring solutions network video recorder. Investigators also searched both Bownds and Walker\u2019s cell phones.<\/p>\n Court records show investigators spoke with former residents who accused the ministry of taking their money, their identification, and threatening probation violations.<\/p>\n
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\nThe rescuers <\/p>\n
\nWho is Lisa Bownds? <\/p>\n
\n\u2018That\u2019s not our avenue\u2019 <\/p>\n
\nUnder arrest <\/p>\n