An Iowa girl has been arrested and charged after allegedly attempting to hire a hitman to kill a seven-year-old child, according to local authorities.
The girl is now facing a felony charge of solicitation to commit murder.
The 17-year-old was charged with solicitation to commit murder after they reportedly submitted the child’s personal information, including their name, address, identifying details and where they could be found, to the website rentahitman.com.
According to the police, the girl used the website RentAHitman.com without realizing the site was a parody.
Operators of the parody website reached out to police in Storm Lake, reporting that ‘a person had visited the site on two occasions and had attempted to solicit the murder of a 7-year-old child,’ Chief Chris Cole said in a statement to NBC News.
Storm Lake Police Department received a report around midnight on June 2 about someone who had visited the website twice to set up the murder of the seven-year-old.
The site’s administrator forwarded the information to the police department.
Police worked through the night to identify both the planned target and possible suspect.
On the morning of June 2, an undercover officer contacted the suspect about the hit, confirming that the teen wanted the child killed.
Around 3.30pm that day, police arrested the suspect and gathered information from their mobile, causing authorities to believe that the solicitation was a credible threat to the child.
The teen, who was found at an address in Storm Lake, was charged and referred to juvenile court and is being held in the Cherokee YES Center.
The child and their family were not harmed and were unaware of the potential threat, according to authorities.
‘Rent-a-Hitman’ is a parody site, featuring fake testimonials, a request form and even a job application for aspiring hitmen.
It was created in 2005 to advertise a cyber security startup company which never made it off the ground.
Real inquiries submitted to the site have led to at least one arrest after a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman in Tennessee was indicted on federal charges.
The FBI alleged he used the site to apply for a job as an assassin.
Though ‘Rent-a-Hitman’ is a bogus site, there are similar sites which exist on the dark web, which claim to legitimately offer the same services.
