Skip to main content
Clear icon
56º

Donald Smith arrested in 2009 for obscene call to young girl

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Donald Smith's arrest Saturday is just the latest in his extensive criminal history. Police arrested the then 53-year-old Donald Smith on Sept. 1, 2009, after investigators say he made an obscene call to a 10-year-old girl and claimed he was with the Department of Children and Families and investigating the girl's family.

Police said posing as a DCF investigator, Smith, called Boggs teenage son's cell phone asking for his little sister -- identifying her by name. Her son then gave him his mother's number instead.

Channel 4 spoke with Stephanie Boggs, the mother of the young victim.

"He called me and asked if he could speak to ****(DELETE)****," Boggs said. "And I asked him who he was, and he said he was with the Department of Children and Families and he had allegations against my daughter being sexually molested by her grandfather and her brother."

She told Channel 4 she continued to press Smith for more information but he told her it was a part of the investigation. She said he then contacted the girl's grandmother demanding that he speak to the little girl on the phone promising he would make a conference call with her mother.

But Boggs said when the child got on the phone, Smith asked her several inappropriate questions like "What are you wearing?" and if she wore a bra and where she lived.   Police say Smith told the child's grandmother to bring her to a neutral location to meet so he could conduct a medical examination.

"He told her if she had told anyone about their conversation that someone would go to jail," Boggs said. "When he spoke to my daughter, he told her the same thing: not to speak to anybody."

She said they waited at a local fast food restaurant for an hour but he didn't' show up. Police say Smith was in the area trying to get the child outside in the parking lot, but the girl's grandmother didn't have a cell phone. When Boggs found out, she started making calls and realized it was all a hoax.

"We've never seen him," Boggs told Channel 4. "She has her father's last name. We don't know how he got her number, how he knows her, nothing."

Detectives finally tracked Smith down and learned he had a criminal past. He was convicted of attempted kidnapping and lewd and lascivious assault on a minor for two separate incidents. In one, police say Smith tried to lure two teenage girls into his van with pornographic magazines, but the children ran away.

"We all think it can't happen to us, but it can," Boggs said.


Recommended Videos