Brice Watkins: Oklahoma pedo who raped friend's baby while changing its diaper was present during infant's birth
SAN MARCOS, TEXAS: 22-year-old Brice Gage Watkins has been accused of raping a baby and charged with three counts of lewd acts to a child under 12, and one count of manufacturing child pornography. Watkins shared a video of himself sexually assaulting a friend's baby while changing the infant's diapers. The video was shared with two female friends of his, one of whom recognized both the child and the background and immediately reported Watkins to the police. Watkins was apprehended by the police on September 11, 2020.
The baby in question was the six-month-old child of one of Watkin's friends — he had even been present when the baby was born. Shelby Minnick, who was one of the friends with whom the video was shared, spoke to the US Sun about the incident. Minnick (who shared her story from the jail she was being held in on unrelated charges), said that she saw several clips of Watkins allegedly sexually assaulting the child while "giving her a bath in the process of changing her diaper".
Prior to the incident, Minnick revealed that she thought of Watkins as to be her "best friend" and "a good guy". According to the Sun, Minnick said "I was beyond disgusted. He was there to see the child born. I never in my life thought he would do anything like this." The footage featured a "screen recording of (someone scrolling) through his (phone's camera roll) gallery" with the message: 'Whose baby is this?' "You could see in the video he had set the phone up to film," she said. "He had taken multiple videos, five different videos in one recording, when she was like six months old."
Minnick immediately recognized "how old (the baby was) and when (it happened) because of (Watkins') hair cut and what he was wearing" in the clip. She was also the one to inform the baby's mother of the assault. "She started panicking. She got there in about five minutes. I had to show her and that was probably the hardest thing I have ever done. She lost it... bawled... how any mother would act," Minnick added.
After putting out a request for any information on Watkins on social media, the Oklahoma City Police Department officials were able to confirm that Watkins had been arrested in Texas. "Our investigators just learned that fugitive Brice Watkins was taken into custody in San Marcos, Texas," said the OCPD, on the afternoon of Thursday, September 11. "Members of the US Marshals Lone Star Fugitive Task Force received that he was possibly hiding out at a residence in San Marcos and were able to take him into custody this afternoon."
A clerk from Garfield County — where Watkins is from — told the Sun that it's not yet known whether or not Watkins has been extradited from Texas to Oklahoma, nor has his court date been set. All in all, it took 56 local task forces working together to locate and apprehend Watkins for his crimes.