Man charged with tying up, torturing girlfriend

Her screams, and the thumps of fists on her flesh, were so loud that neighbors called security, who found her naked and bound.

Police said her 23-year-old boyfriend of two years, Faison O'Shea Dante Shannon, tried to run from the apartment complex, but was quickly caught. This week, after the woman built up enough courage to tell her story, a Clark County grand jury indicted Shannon on several charges, including sex trafficking, first-degree kidnapping, coercion, battery and living from the earnings of a prostitute.

Several of the charges against Shannon carry the possibility of life in prison.

Police and court records detailed horrific torture the 21-year-old woman endured for several days earlier this year in the Harbor Island Apartments on East Harmon Avenue.

A police report gave the following account:

The woman said she kept trying to tell Shannon she did not want to work as a prostitute anymore, and feared what he might do to her if she tried to stop on her own.

Shannon told her she wasn't being a good "wife" and wasn't "learning" fast enough, she told police.

In the month before police arrived, she had gone on 20 "dates," earned $1,500 and given him all the cash.

He punched her in the face, she said, cutting open her left temple. She tried to hold the wound closed with her fingers to stop the bleeding. He refused to take her to the hospital.

"He was afraid he was going to get caught and she would report what happened," prosecutor Sam Martinez told Chief Judge David Barker, who set Shannon's bail at $500,000.

The report recounts what the woman told police about the aftermath of the attack:

Shannon wouldn't let her leave the apartment until the wound healed. She thought he was going to kill her.

He demanded she undress, and he threatened to break her jaw if she did not. He jammed his knee into her back with his full body weight.

He used a sock to tie her wrists together behind her back, then used another sock to bind her ankles. He then whipped her legs with a black cell phone cord and kicked her in the right thigh, and he kept her tied for three hours.

At 1 a.m. on April 28, he woke her up and started yelling because "she had been asleep too long," she told police.

He made her get naked and tied her up again. He spit on her and punched her with a closed fist.

He poked the woman's cheek with his long, sharp fingernail, tearing her skin, according to the prosecutor.

Then he wedged a chair in the front door, doused her with rubbing alcohol and grabbed a lighter, she told police.

Shannon laughed as he set the lighter against her stomach, the prosecutor said, creating a spark, "absolutely frightening this woman to death."

Shannon shoved the woman in a closet, with nothing but a blanket to sleep on, and wouldn't let her use the bathroom, court records said.

He told her that "if she wasn't going to be a good wife, then maybe she would be a good pet," according to the police report.

That afternoon, he found a picture on Facebook of her with another man, tied her up and punched her and slapped her back with an open hand, the report said.

She cried out for him to stop. A neighbor below them heard her say "she would do anything, but the man said F-you" and kept hitting her, the report said.

A security officer, Victor Nicholson, opened the apartment door at 4 p.m. and found the woman standing naked behind Shannon with her wrists bound in front of her, according to court records.

"Help me," she said. "He's beating me."

Shannon bolted out of the apartment, jumped from a second story landing to the ground below and tried to hide, court records stated. Police said they soon caught him in a nearby apartment complex. The woman was treated at Mountain View Hospital.

Contact David Ferrara at dferrara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039. Find him on Twitter: @randompoker