FirstAlerts

Kill Devil Hills man charged with soliciting 13-year-old online

Rene Cervantes faces charges involving online communications with a minor; case remains pending.

3 reports on this incident · first at Sep 9, 2026, 7:19 p.m. ET

By AI ReporterFirst reported Sep 9, 2026, 6:31 p.m. ETWritten Sep 9, 2026, 7:27 p.m. ET
Rene Cervantes, a Kill Devil Hills man, has been with solicitation of a child by computer and disseminating obscenities, according to witn.com. The charges were reported on September 9, 2026. The government alleges Cervantes communicated with a 13-year-old girl through an app and text messages, sending six or more images of his private area on August 15. The investigation involved the Kill Devil Hills police and Predator Poachers Long Island, as reported by witn.com. The case is at the charging stage and has not been resolved. Cervantes has not been tried, and he is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in a court of law. No further court dates were disclosed.

Earlier reports

  1. Sep 9, 2026, 7:24 p.m. ET

    Kill Devil Hills man charged with soliciting 13-year-old online

    Rene Cervantes has been charged with solicitation of a child by computer and disseminating obscenities. The charges stem from allegations that Cervantes communicated with a 13-year-old girl through an app and text messages, sending six or more images of his private area on August 15.

    The investigation was conducted by Kill Devil Hills police and Predator Poachers Long Island. As this matter is only at the charging stage, it is undecided, and Cervantes has not been tried. He is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Sentencing has not yet been scheduled.

  2. Sep 9, 2026, 7:19 p.m. ETFirst report

    Kill Devil Hills man charged with soliciting 13-year-old online

    A Kill Devil Hills man has been charged with soliciting a child by computer and disseminating obscenities, according to witn.com. The charges stem from an alleged online communication with a 13-year-old girl.

    The government claims Rene Cervantes communicated with the girl through an app and text messages, sending six or more images of his private area on August 15, witn.com reported. The investigation involves the Kill Devil Hills police and Predator Poachers Long Island, a volunteer group.

    Cervantes has been charged but not tried; charges are allegations and he is presumed innocent.

Was this report accurate and useful?

Sources

Revision history

  1. Version 19 Sept 2026, 23:24current

    First published.

  2. Version 19 Sept 2026, 23:19current

    First published.

  3. Version 19 Sept 2026, 23:27current

    First published.

How we work

This site models an investigative reporter rather than a wire desk. The aim is the most complete, accurate and timely account we can assemble — all three, not a trade between them. Reports go out within minutes of the coverage they are built from, carrying context a newsroom would otherwise need a day and a records request to gather: what has happened at this place before, what the operator’s record is, which aircraft it actually was.

Reports are built from primary sources — accident and court records, official registries, weather observations, agency statements — and from reputable news organisations, each named where their reporting is used. Facts are extracted before anything is written, and every one must be supported by a quotation found in the source itself; the model that writes the report is given only those verified facts and never sees the article, so it cannot introduce a detail no source stated.

Where sources disagree we publish the disagreement, attributed, rather than picking a figure. Where a fact comes from a record rather than a reporter, we say so, and the language matches: an instrument reading is never described as something anyone confirmed. Some things are deliberately withheld — a suspect is not named until an agency names them on the record, victims until families or officials release them — and corrections appear as visible revisions, never as silent edits.

None of that makes a report true. A quotation check proves a source said something, not that it was right, and an automated system can be confidently wrong in ways the checks do not catch. If something here is wrong, the feedback above is how it gets found. The full methodology, including what we refuse to publish.