Trending

Texas apprentice plumber gets 25-year sentence for molesting 4-year-old girl

HARRIS COUNTY, Texas — A Texas apprentice plumber was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Monday after pleading guilty to molesting a 4-year-old girl in a home where he was working, prosecutors announced Thursday.

>> Read more trending news

Brandon Joseph Bonds, 26, of Spring Branch, pleaded guilty to aggravated sexual assault, the Houston Chronicle reported. The crime was a first-degree felony, the newspaper reported.

“It’s every parent’s worst nightmare to have a stranger violate the sanctity of a family’s home and abuse a small child, and I’m proud we were able to get justice for this little girl,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said in a statement.

Prosecutors said that on Aug. 25, 2018, Bonds and his boss, a master plumber, were working on a garage apartment at a home when the victim’s father asked the boss to take a look at an upstairs bathroom, KTRK-TV reported. The victim’s father locked the home’s front door, leaving Bonds outside, but the apprentice plumber was able to persuade the girl to unlock it, prosecutors said in the news release.

Prosecutors stated that Bonds molested the child, who reported the incident to her parents, the Chronicle reported. The girl was taken to an area hospital and evidence was gathered, according to the newspaper.

In addition to DNA evidence from the girl, investigators were able to retrieve evidence showing that Bonds recorded video footage of the incident and deleted it, prosecutors said in the news release.

“Of all the child abuse cases I’ve seen, this is one of the worst because that 4-year-old was watching cartoons in her living room, with her parents at home, and it should have been the safest place in the universe for her,” Assistant District Attorney Preston Burns, who prosecuted the case, said in a statement. “But he was able to get to her and do something terribly, horribly awful to her.”