Tennessee man gets 9 years for trafficking Spring Hill teen
A Hohenwald man got 108 months for grooming a 16-year-old from Spring Hill on Snapchat, then driving her through Kentucky and Texas.
A Hohenwald, Tennessee, man will spend nine years in federal prison after prosecutors said he used Snapchat, a cellphone and repeated pressure to pull a 16-year-old Spring Hill girl across state lines. Drew Roden was sentenced June 12 to 108 months, followed by 10 years of supervised release, in a case that began after her family reported her missing.
Roden was 22 when he met the girl in December 2022 on Snapchat, and prosecutors said he knew she was 16. He later bought her a cell phone and encouraged her to sneak out of her family’s home at night to meet him, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee. Roden pleaded guilty July 28, 2025, to coercion and enticement to travel in interstate commerce to engage in illegal sexual activity.
In late January 2023, prosecutors said, Roden drove the teen from Tennessee to Bowling Green, Kentucky, and then to Houston, Texas, to continue the relationship. Spring Hill police referred the case to the FBI after the family reported the girl missing, and agents in Nashville and Houston traced Roden to Houston, where he was arrested Feb. 2, 2023, about a week after she was last seen at home.
The case lays out warning signs that are familiar to parents and school officials in Hernando County: contact that starts on social media, gifts that create a private line of communication, secrecy and pressure to meet away from home. Federal law under 18 U.S.C. 2422(a) prohibits knowingly persuading, inducing, enticing or coercing a person to travel in interstate commerce for criminal sexual activity, and it carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Monica R. Morrison prosecuted the case, with help from Trial Attorney Adam Braskich of the Justice Department’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section. The investigation involved the Spring Hill Police Department and the FBI’s Nashville and Houston field offices, a reminder that a missing-teen report can turn into an interstate search within days when digital contact crosses county and state lines.
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