What happened inside a West U home is a reminder not to be too trusting of strangers you have working in your home. Now 24-year-old Justin Summers is in jail, charged with indecency with a child and promotion of child pornography. Police here say he assaulted a little girl in her new home and even recorded it.
It was during a time of transition to a new state, this new neighborhood, that West University Place police say Summers, using his job as a mover, victimized a little girl.
Last March, he was invited into her family's new home in West U, where according to police, he lifted up the five-year-old's skirt, touched her and even recorded it on his cell phone. It's said to have happened in an upstairs bedroom in front of the girl's seven-year-old brother. When police arrested Summers, they say they found the evidence.
"There were two digital videos actually that were taken, not simply photos, but actually videotape of the event," West U. Police Dept. Officer Phil Clark said.
At the time, Summers worked for a Better Tripp Moving and Storage company in northwest Houston, where his father had been the longtime operations manager and where he had been for six years until he abruptly quit in April.
An office manager declined an on-camera interview but told us, "We're all shocked and appalled. It's not anything we had ever, ever suspected. If it is true, he deserves to be prosecuted to the fullest."
Summers, she says, was one of their most popular members; he had been in thousands of homes. And that alone worries police.
"Anytime something like this goes on, you'd have to be wonder if this is the first time or not," Clark said.
West U police are making an appeal for other possible victims to come forward.
Though Texas law does not require it, a Better Tripp moving company spokesperson said they did do a criminal background check on Summers. But somehow, they missed a 2005 burglary charge, along with two other charges -- one for drug possession, another for hitting a public servant came after he was hired.
Summers is due in court next Monday.
