‘Tell on me:’ Armed Kansas City security guard allegedly raped woman who stole trash bin

An armed security guard is accused of illegally detaining and sexually assaulting a woman who stole a plastic trash bin from a Kansas City apartment building in the Lykins neighborhood.

Jackson County prosecutors charged the guard, Brandon S. Wells, of Kansas City, with first-degree kidnapping, first-degree sodomy and misdemeanor assault after the woman reported the encounter to police on Aug. 1.

Capt. Corey Carlisle, a Kansas City Police Department spokesman, said Wells was arrested in Florida and preparations were underway to extradite him to Missouri. Online booking logs showed Wells, 39, was being held in the Miami-Dade metro jail since Wednesday afternoon on an out-of-state fugitive warrant.

Detectives with KCPD’s Special Victims Unit began investigating the case earlier this month. The woman, identified in court documents as Victim #1, said she had left her boyfriend’s apartment around 4 a.m. with her belongings and later took a plastic trash bin when the bag she was carrying began to rip.

She was in the 900 block of Benton Boulevard, she said, when a man she recognized as a private security guard pulled up. He was wearing police-style attire that included a patch identifying him as part of a “K-9 Unit,” according to court documents.

He instructed her to return the bin, which she did. Then, she said, he told her she was being detained for trespassing and possession of stolen property.

After being put in handcuffs, she said the security guard lifted her shirt high enough to expose her breasts and looked down her pants. She was then put in his “marked patrol vehicle” and sat there while he went around the corner of the building to investigate “suspicious activity.”

When he returned, she said, he told her there “has to be a punishment for everything” and instead of going to jail “you’re going to fill my needs.”

She said she was forced to perform oral sex on him, while handcuffed, and he spit in her face afterward. She said he told her to “get the hell out of here” and challenged her to file a police report.

“If you tell on me it won’t matter because this isn’t the first time and you’re just another drug addict,” she recalled him saying, according to court documents.

The woman visited a hospital but did not have a rape kit done after learning a nurse trained to do that was not present at the time. During a follow-up interview with police, she positively identified Wells from a photo lineup after a license-plate reading camera recorded his vehicle being driven on Independence Avenue in the early hours of Aug. 1.

Detectives learned during the course of their investigation that there was no security contract for the address where the woman said she was assaulted.

Instead, they found Wells was working through United States Protective Service Inc., which had a contract for property on the same block. Records from the Missouri and Kansas secretaries of state list Wells as an organizer of the security company.

Other information included GPS data from a third-party company that provides computer-aided dispatch for United States Protective Service. There was a record of Wells stopping the woman for a period of about 30 minutes, according to court documents.

During a voluntary interview at KCPD Headquarters on Aug. 9, Wells recalled seeing a woman steal a trash bin from the property he is responsible for supervising. He said he obtained her information and released her when she promised to never come back.

Wells denied assaulting her. He said he never had a sexual encounter while working. He also said he would need to contact his attorney when asked whether he would be willing to submit a sample of his DNA for testing.

Online court records did not list a defense attorney for Wells as of Wednesday.

A warrant for Wells’ arrest issued Friday calls for him to be held in the Jackson County jail on a $150,000 bond.

Under Missouri law, Wells faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted of first-degree kidnapping. First-degree sodomy, a criminal charge for illegal acts involving deviate sexual intercourse, carries a maximum penalty of life in prison and is an offense ineligible for probation.