Eight people have been indicted on dozens of felony charges in connection with an alleged gang-affiliated sex trafficking ring that targeted a 17-year-old girl reported missing out of McDuffie County. The girl was found by law enforcement in December 2025, and the case has since grown from a single arrest into a sprawling multi-county prosecution spanning Bibb, McDuffie and Richmond counties.
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr announced the multi-county indictments, which followed presentations of evidence to grand juries in all three counties, as reported by WGXA. State and local investigators believe the defendants participated in a gang-affiliated trafficking ring connected to the Gangster Disciples, a criminal street gang that originated in Chicago. The alleged ringleader, 40-year-old Jimmy Lavont Mance of Thomson, is accused alongside his co-defendants of transporting the victim for commercial sex, profiting from the arrangements, and posting advertisements of her online.
Mance is also accused of posting sex advertisements for an adult woman online and of taking explicit photos of the victim, according to the outlet. In a particularly violent twist to the case, Mance is accused of shooting one of his own co-defendants, 48-year-old Christopher Jerome Carter of Thomson, during the course of the alleged criminal enterprise.
From a Single Arrest to a Statewide Case
Mance was initially indicted in McDuffie County in June 2026, but state prosecutors have since re-indicted him and expanded the case across Bibb, McDuffie and Richmond counties. According to the Georgia Attorney General's Office, that original June indictment charged Mance with two counts of human trafficking and two counts of sexual exploitation of a child, filed after the victim's recovery in December 2025.
The case ballooned significantly in the weeks that followed. Just before the August indictments, law enforcement officers executed simultaneous tactical raids across McDuffie and Lincoln counties on August 14, resulting in five arrests tied to the human trafficking and gang investigation. All eight defendants now face several felony charges, including trafficking of persons for sexual servitude, sexual exploitation of a child, rape, pimping, violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, and violations of the Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act.
The other defendants named in the case include 31-year-old Robert Richard Vantassell of Thomson, 47-year-old Shawanna Brown Mance of Augusta, 33-year-old John Peyton Norman of Lincolnton, 43-year-old Moses Lavar Leverette of Thomson, 58-year-old Larry James Mance of Thomson, and 48-year-old Kathleen Angel Lowery of Macon. Across the three separate indictments returned in Bibb, McDuffie and Richmond counties, prosecutors charged the eight co-defendants with 28 combined felony counts in total, including three counts of Georgia RICO, 11 counts of human trafficking for sexual servitude, five gang act counts, three counts of aggravated assault, and two firearm charges, per 13WMAZ.
A Multi-Agency Task Force Across Rural and Urban Georgia
Building the case required cooperation across a wide swath of the state. The investigation relied on a joint task force comprising at least nine local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, including sheriff's departments from McDuffie, Richmond, Bibb, Columbia, Lincoln and Paulding counties, the Thomson Police Department, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and the U.S. Marshals Service, according to the Georgia Attorney General's Office. Carr said all levels of law enforcement are working together to keep Georgians safe, and that the human trafficking and gang prosecution units are fighting daily to remove violent criminals and predators from the streets. He added that the indictments send a message to people who target children.
The scale of this operation traces back to infrastructure the Attorney General's Office built in the region over the past year and a half. In April 2025, Carr expanded the Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit into the Augusta and Central Savannah River Area by stationing a dedicated regional prosecutor and two investigators locally, a move specifically designed to target trafficking networks operating outside metropolitan Atlanta. That regional presence appears to have played a direct role in enabling prosecutors to build the complex, three-county case against Mance and his co-defendants.
Leadership Change at the State's Trafficking Unit
The indictments also arrive amid a leadership transition at the unit prosecuting the case. Just prior to the August indictments, Carr appointed Chris Keegan as the new Section Chief of the Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit on August 3, succeeding founding chief Hannah Palmquist. Keegan previously assisted in overseeing major recovery operations and human trafficking cases dating back to 2023.
Since its creation in 2019, the unit has secured more than 70 criminal convictions and rescued or assisted over 200 child victims statewide. Georgia's separate statewide Gang Prosecution Unit, meanwhile, marked four years of operation in July, having secured over 140 criminal convictions since its launch on July 1, 2022. Prosecutors used the Georgia Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act to attach gang participation charges to the underlying felonies in this case, a statute that allows for severe mandatory minimum prison sentences for crimes committed to benefit a criminal street gang, though the law requires prosecutors to establish a direct connection between each offense and gang furtherance.
This case is not an isolated one. In a separate statewide action reported by FOX 5 Atlanta, a Fulton County grand jury indicted an Atlanta-area man in August for sex trafficking a 16-year-old girl recovered during Operation “Global Chain,” an international sweep that located 11 missing Georgia children in June. Open questions remain about where each defendant in the Bibb-McDuffie-Richmond case will ultimately stand trial across the three counties, and whether additional buyers or co-conspirators could still face charges as the investigation continues.
