An Idaho delivery driver sexually exploited teenage girls. He was just sentenced
An Idaho man who used his work as a food-delivery driver to locate potential victims will spend at least the next decade in prison for the “repeated sexual battery of teenage girls.”
Akua Wells, 32, was sentenced to 35 years in prison, with the possibility of parole after 10, after he pleaded guilty to a single count of sexual battery of a minor child, court records showed. He was initially facing four felony counts, but three sexual battery charges were dropped as a part of a plea deal with the Ada County Prosecutor’s Office.
With the original charges, he could have faced up to life in prison under state law.
Ada County Deputy Prosecutor Kristine Ingle said Wells used the bodies of teenage girls for his “own sexual gratification.”
“This case is about a 30-plus-year-old man who spent his free time with teenage girls — buying them alcohol, driving them around, pretending to give them a safe place to be — and then sexually exploiting them,” she said in court. “He did this repeatedly.”
He was arrested in November by the Ada County Sheriff’s Office. Authorities warned at the time that there could be more victims.
Ingle said Wells asked one of the girls to have sex with him in exchange for alcohol, fully knowing that she was underage. The parents of the girl said Wells’ “repeated sexual assaults” shattered their daughter’s recovery, as she’d already dealt with mental health issues.
“We have watched our daughter — once full of light — become fearful, withdrawn and overwhelmed by emotions she cannot control,” the parents of the girl said in court.
