A Clayton County man charged with human trafficking following a traffic stop in North Georgia has been sentenced to six years in prison, officials said.
Cordarrel Blandburg, 28, was arrested in September 2019 when an Ellijay police officer grew suspicious after conducting an early morning stop on a Toyota Prius. Blandburg was initially pulled over for failing to dim his headlights and driving without a tag light along Old Highway 5, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution previously reported.
During the stop, Blandburg told the officer the 30-year-old woman seated next to him was his fiancee and that he was rushing her to the hospital because she’d suffered a seizure, Ellijay police Chief Edward Lacey said at the time.
Suspicious of their relationship, Officer Brandon Heath followed the couple to the hospital, where he eventually separated them and started asking questions.
It was there the woman described Blandburg as “her owner and enforcer,” investigators said.
“She absolutely denied being his fiancee and gave us information which led us to believe that she was being held against her will for the purposes of sex trafficking,” Lacey told the AJC following Blandburg’s arrest.
The case was believed to be the first human trafficking arrest in Gilmer County’s history. The GBI was called in to investigate and learned that Blandburg was an associate of the Gangster Disciples street gang and had been trafficking the woman in Georgia and Alabama for nearly two years, authorities said Wednesday.
Blandburg recently pleaded guilty to violating the state’s Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act, criminal attempt to commit human trafficking and false imprisonment, the GBI said in a news release. He was sentenced to 20 years, with six to serve in prison.
Authorities said the woman confronted Blandburg by reading a victim impact statement at his sentencing hearing. GBI officials said she is a “survivor and well on her way to recovery.”
In a statement, Appalachian Judicial Circuit District Attorney Alison Sosebee said her office would continue to partner with state and local agencies to investigate and prosecute human trafficking cases “in the hope that victimization will decline, and fewer people will be forced to suffer the trauma of such crimes.”
Blandburg must register as a sex offender following his release from prison.
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