North Carolina man charged with human trafficking after holding woman and infant captive

A North Carolina man is accused of kidnapping a woman and her young child and holding them captive for more than a month, forcing the woman into sexual servitude.

The Pender County Sheriff's Office found out about it when the 24-year-old Honduran woman called 911 on August 9.

She told dispatchers that a man -- later identified as James Bryan Peterson -- was holding her captive and that she was worried he was going to return home before police arrived.

In Spanish, she told an interpreter that he had brought her from Honduras and was keeping her locked up. She said he threatened her with a gun and wouldn't let her leave.

While waiting for officers to arrive, she explained to the dispatcher that she had tried to escape one time but he pulled her by the hair, told her to put her infant son down and then started using an "electrical gun" on her.

Peterson is charged with human trafficking of an adult victim, human trafficking of a child victim, kidnapping, involuntary servitude, sexual servitude, felonious restraint and second-degree kidnapping.

"I was shocked," next door neighbor Ashley Gurganus said. "You don't expect stuff like that to happen around here. And then to find out it's pretty much your neighbor, it's very scary."

He is being held on a $2 million bond.