PHILADELPHIA — A 19-year-old Philadelphia man is accused of coercing a 13-year-old girl he met on TikTok to travel across the state from Westmoreland County, where police said he sexually assaulted her multiple times.
According to a criminal complaint, a woman called Greensburg police on March 14 to report her 13-year-old daughter missing after finding a note from her stating she ran away.
Investigators were able to track her cellphone to Philadelphia. Officers in Philadelphia found the victim and took her to the police station until her mother arrived.
The mother told police back in Westmoreland County that she may have met a man on social media who convinced her to travel across the state but wasn’t sure how she would have made it there.
When the mother was on the way back to Greensburg with the victim, she called the police back and told them her daughter had been talking to a man named Angel Lopez, 19, on TikTok, according to the criminal complaint. She said that he convinced her daughter to sneak out of her home and catch an Uber that Angel had arranged and paid for.
Authorities then interviewed the 13-year-old victim. She told them that when Lopez and she started texting each other, he began to ask her to send explicit content, according to police. She said that Angel “loves her.”
She told authorities that when she arrived at Lopez’s apartment, he made her turn off her cell phone and take several hits from a “weed pen,” the complaint says.
After that, the victim said that Lopez sexually assaulted her, according to police. Police said the victim described feeling extremely uncomfortable and disgusted, and that she felt “weird” throughout the encounter.
The complaint says that the victim then told Lopez she wanted to leave the apartment, but that he started using “manipulation tactics” to manipulate her, including hitting himself and saying he was a boxer. Lopez allegedly told the victim, “They won’t be able to find you anyway.”
The victim stated she started to fear for her safety while at Lopez’s apartment, so she pulled out strands of her hair and left them in parts of the bedroom, hoping that her DNA would be found later, according to police.
The 13-year-old said she was eventually able to escape. She told police that there were times she had second thoughts about traveling to Philadelphia, but Lopez told her if she didn’t go through with the trip, he would harm himself.
“Give me five minutes with him. That’s all I have to say to him.”
Channel 11 spoke to the mother of the 13-year-old girl.
We concealed her identity to protect her and her daughter.
“These girls… they’re young. They’re going through changes that they haven’t experienced. So to be groomed and lured is very easy,” the victim’s mother said.
Detective Justin Scalzo with the Greensburg Police Department told Channel 11, during one day of chatting, Lopez and the teen sent 1,862 pages of text messages to each other.
Officers were able to ping the girl’s phone — and it popped up at Lopez’s apartment. Police got to her, while her mother drove across the state to pick her up.
“I always see things on social media or the news, and am like ‘That will never happen to me.’ It’s not true at all, it can happen no matter what,” the mother added.
Lopez was taken into custody. He is facing dozens of charges, including kidnapping of a minor, trafficking in individuals, statutory sexual assault and involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with someone under 16. He is being transported to the Westmoreland County and held without bond.
Download the FREE WPXI News app for breaking news alerts.
Follow Channel 11 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch WPXI NOW
©2025 Cox Media Group
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/cmg/XCUXZC2XYZHCRGNNGKFEX6U3LQ.png)
