By Anna M. Phillips | Tampa Bay Times
A Plant City man who kidnapped a 16-year-old girl and took her to Louisiana pleaded guilty last week to attempted murder and was sentenced to 35 years of hard labor, according to Lafayette Parish, Louisiana’s The Advertiser.
For a week in June 2014, Steven Patrick Myers, 42, was a wanted man, hunted by law enforcement officials in Hillsborough County and accused of absconding with Ashley Lyon, a vulnerable teenager who had exchanged text messages with him.
Spotted at a truck stop near Baton Rouge, Louisiana by a clerk who recognized them from media coverage, the pair took off in a stolen pickup truck. Myers led police on a 40-mile chase that ended in Lafayette, where he climbed on the truck’s hood, yelled for officers to kill him and stabbed himself.
Officers found Lyon inside the truck with eight stab wounds to her chest and back. She was taken to a nearby hospital where she underwent surgery and was later released.
Myers was attacked by a police dog and shocked with a stun gun. He was briefly hospitalized before being taken to jail.
Lyon was a sophomore at Newsome High School in Valrico when she met Myers in April 2014. According to her parents, the older man was hanging around the neighborhood with his two sons, who Lyon knew from school, and was known to ride skateboards with kids in the area. Lyon’s parents questioned her about Myers, who struck them as odd.
What they didn’t know was that he was twice convicted in Georgia for molesting children.
Georgia state corrections records show Myers served two stints in prison for those convictions, first from 1999 to 2003, and again from 2010 to 2012. During the time he lived in Plant City, he was a registered sex offender and was barred by state law from coming within 1,000 feet of a school, playground or park.
After Lyon went missing on June 11, her parents discovered she had exchanged 2,000 text messages with Myers. She had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder but had disappeared without taking her medication with her, according to Lyon’s family. Her parents thought she left willingly with Myers. The family could not be reached for comment.
Myers was charged with several crimes in Hillsborough County, including using an electronic device to seduce or solicit a minor for sex and attempted unlawful sexual activity with a minor. In Louisiana, he initially faced a charge of attempted first-degree murder but pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree murder.
