Sex offender Keith Daniel Freerksen, 30, was arrested earlier this week after a 14-year-old girl who vanished from her family's Washington state home was found with him, officials said.
The man arrested in the kidnapping of a 14-year-old girl found in Michigan several weeks after vanishing from her Washington state home, has been identified as a convicted sex offender found to be in possession of child pornography seven years ago, officials said.
Keith Daniel Freerksen, 30, was arrested Tuesday and charged with a slew of felonies.
Freerksen is scheduled to be arraigned Friday afternoon on the following charges: two counts of human trafficking of a minor for commercial sexual activity; two counts of using a computer to commit a crime; one count of first-degree criminal sexual conduct; three counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct; one count accosting a child for immoral purposes.
If found guilty of the criminal sexual conduct in the first degree charge, Freerksen could be sentenced to life in prison. The other felony charges can carry sentences between four and 20 years in prison.
Inside Edition Digital has reached out to the Van Buren County Courts and prosecutors office for more information and has not heard back.
Freerksen may face additional charges in Washington. Those have not been announced yet.
It remains unclear if he would be extradited to Washington state.
A Facebook profile connected to Freerksen says he is from Illinois and attended Full Sail University in Florida, where he studied Audio Equipment Diagnostics between 2012 and 2014.
In 2017, Freerksen was found guilty in a Seminole County, Florida, court of possessing photography, film or other representation that knowingly includes sexual conduct by a child. He has been on Florida’s sex offender registry ever since.
"He admitted post-Miranda that he would trade child pornography, and that what was on there was child pornography, and that he retained it for future trading opportunities," state prosecutors said during a 2017 court appearance.
Freerksen was listed as a registered sex offender and eventually released, subject to registration. Under Florida law, that means he was, “No longer under any form of confinement, supervision or any other court imposed sanction," but "still required to register in accordance with Florida law.”
Florida’s sex offender registry says that Freerksen last reported address was “out of state” in South Haven, Michigan. It was there, in Van Buren County, that he was arrested in connection to the kidnapping of the teenager.
The teen had been missing since Jan. 5. Her mother told Inside Edition Digital that her daughter was believed to have met a man on the social media platform Omegle, which gained popularity among teens during the COVID-19 pandemic and shut down in November.
The girl left her phone at her home but took many belongings, leading friends and family to think the disappearance was planned. On Thursday, the Mount Vernon police department confirmed that she had been found unharmed.
Van Buren Sheriff Dan Abbott said at the press conference on Friday that action needs to be taken in order to protect children from online predators.
"There are safeguards on millions of products in this world but websites are still readily available to our children at the touch of their fingertips," he said.
"This is a time for change and I hope there is more people that are lucky to come home safe but unfortunately not everyone has that story," the victim's mother said at Friday's press conference.
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