Two rival sex traffickers arrested in Norristown following shooting, police say
Efran Flores-Rodriguez and Fernando Meza-Ramirez are being held without bail at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility.
A street shooting in Norristown last week led investigators to discover two sex-trafficking operations that transported women from New York to Montgomery County to engage in prostitution, prosecutors said Thursday.
A dispute between two men who ran rival enterprises erupted in gunfire on Feb. 13, police said, when one shot the other in the thigh during a confrontation on the 400 block of Sandy Street.
On Tuesday, authorities arrested both men.
Efran Flores-Rodriguez, 24, of Norristown, and Fernando Meza-Ramirez, 42, of Corona, Queens, are each charged with trafficking individuals and involuntary servitude. Flores-Rodriguez faces additional charges, including attempted murder, in connection with the shooting.
Officers responding to reports of gunfire found Meza-Ramirez inside a bullet-riddled Toyota RAV4, police said. He had been shot in the thigh.
Meza-Ramirez told police that a stolen white Acura TLX had followed him from Lafayette Street to Sandy Street. When he pulled over, he said, the sedan pulled up beside him and someone opened fire. A witness identified Flores-Rodriguez as the shooter, according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest.
But investigators say the shooting exposed more than a personal feud.
At the hospital where Meza-Ramirez was treated, officers found business cards in his wallet bearing photographs of scantily clad women posing on beds, according to the affidavit.
Days later, on Feb. 17, police searched Flores-Rodriguez’s home and encountered a woman from Flushing, Queens, who told them she had worked as a prostitute under his direction last summer.
She said Flores-Rodriguez, whom she knew as “Guerro,” drove her to Norristown six days a week, provided her a room and charged clients $60 for 10-minute sexual encounters. She told police she sometimes had as many as 15 encounters a day and kept half of the money he collected.
The woman said she also worked this year for Meza-Ramirez, whom she knew as “Leo,” under the same arrangement, according to the affidavit.
Both men were denied bail at arraignment and are being held at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility.