North Texas man who beat, sex-trafficked 17- and 18-year-old girls finds out his sentence

A 39-year-old Dallas man who sex-trafficked multiple young women will spend 20 years in prison after he was sentenced Aug. 24 in federal court, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas.

Demetrius Lewaun Byrd, who called himself “Staxx Diego,” pleaded guilty in March 2022 to sex trafficking through force, fraud and coercion, the Department of Justice said in a news release Tuesday. Byrd admitted in plea papers to trafficking one 17-year-old girl and two 18-year-old women between 2016 and 2018.

Testimony at the sentencing hearing showed Byrd used social media platforms to recruit 17-year-old girls and 18-year-old women to work for him in the commercial sex trade, often using promises that they would be his girlfriend to coerce them, according to the Justice Department. He also used social media and text messages “to shame women and manipulate them if they tried to leave him,” authorities said.

In one instance, Byrd drove to Oklahoma to pick up a girl who he claimed he wanted to date then drove her back to Texas, stopping along the way to force her to go into a motel room, take money from the man inside and do whatever he wanted, according to the DOJ. Byrd kept the money afterward.

For six months after that, the DOJ said, Byrd posted sex ads online for the girl, forcing her to have sex with customers and hand over the money they gave her. When the victim tried to leave, Byrd punched her in the face and pinned her against a fence. When later on she managed to escape him, Byrd staged his own suicide in an attempt to pressure her into returning.

Byrd was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Sam Lindsay.