A Morris County man thought he was smooth-talking a 13-year-old girl into a coffee shop meetup—turns out, he was spilling his dirty secrets to cops. Andrew Ryan Hendershot, 32, of Rockaway Borough, got slapped with a slew of charges after allegedly trying to lure what he believed were young teens into sexual encounters online.
Morris County Prosecutor Robert Carroll and Chief of Detectives Robert McNally spilled the beans Monday on Hendershot’s arrest, which went down February 28. The creep’s been hit with heavy counts like attempted sexual assault and luring after a months-long probe caught him in the act.
It all kicked off in February when Minnesota’s Polk County Sheriff’s Office tipped off Warren County about Hendershot’s shady Snapchat chats. Cops say he was getting steamy with someone he thought was a 14-year-old girl—really an undercover agent. Once Morris County took the reins, Hendershot kept the sleaze going, texting up a storm with task force officers posing as a 13-year-old and an 11-year-old. He even allegedly sent explicit videos of himself to the 13-year-old persona and set up a meet at a local coffee joint.
Big mistake.
The Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force swooped in, nabbing him before he could make good on his sick plans. Now, he’s facing a laundry list of charges: second-degree attempted sexual assault, second-degree attempted luring, plus a handful of third- and fourth-degree raps for endangering kids and dabbling in obscene material.
Investigators aren’t saying much about how they tracked him down, but the bust’s got Rockaway buzzing. Hendershot’s locked up for now, with prosecutors vowing to keep the heat on predators prowling the web for victims.
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