Bobby Allen Osborne, 40, a South Carolina registered sex offender arrested in June in the kidnapping of a 13-year-old Southaven girl, was found dead in the Lafayette County Detention Center in Oxford, Mississippi.
Officials said he apparently hanged himself in his jail cell, where he was being held on federal charges that he transported a minor across state lines for the purpose of engaging in illegal sexual activity.
Lafayette County Coroner Rocky Kennedy said Osborne's death Tuesday appeared "consistent with self-inflicted hanging," according to a report from the Associated Press. An autopsy will be performed.
The investigation and eventual arrest of Osborne, of Anderson, South Carolina, came after the girl's mother reported to Southaven police on June 23 that her daughter had run away from home.
Later the mother told investigators that she found several conversations on her daughter's cell phone with a man the girl believed to be between 18 and 21 years old.
Working with South Carolina authorities, Verizon Wireless and the U.S. Marshals Service and other agencies, police identified the suspect; on June 24 the girl and the suspect were found at a home in South Carolina.
The girl was placed in protective custody and picked up by her parents; Osborne was extradited back to Mississippi, where he faced kidnapping charges. He also faced charges in South Carolina, according to the U.S. Marshals Service.
Osborne's arrest stirred a warning from Southaven Police Chief Tom Long: "Our message to all parents is to monitor what your children are doing because people online are not who they say they are, and in this case a catastrophe was avoided." ..Source.. by Staff and Wire Reports
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