US woman, 42, jailed for seducing 16-year-old Canadian boy

NEW YORK - A 42-year-old American woman, who seduced a 16-year-old Canadian boy online and then flew last week to Canada to meet him in his hometown of Barrie near Toronto, has been arrested on her return to Houston.

Lauri Price, a mother of four, who was found last Thursday with 16-year-old Andrew Kane in a shopping mall while going for a movie, was sent back from Canada by police as she faced no criminal charges because the boy has reached the age of consent.

But she was arrested early Tuesday when she landed at Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston on two counts of on-line solicitation of a minor and one count of child enticement, according to a Houston daily.

Harris County prosecutor Eric Devlin said Canadian immigration officials had notified them when Price left Toronto.

“She was arrested on the plane” when her Air Canada flight arrived in Houston at 12.30 a.m., the prosecutor was quoted as saying in the Houston Chronicle.

The woman is in trouble as the age of consent in Texas is 17, as against 16 in Canada where she was let off.

She remains in jail with a combined bail of $310,000 for the three charges against her, the newspaper said.

“She enticed him (the Canadian teenager) to leave home. That’s illegal in the state of Texas,” the prosecutor said.

“It doesn’t even matter if it’s within the age of consent in a foreign country,” the prosecutor added.

Revealing her sexually explicit chat with the teenager, the prosecutor said: “The (online) chats they have are incredibly sexually explicit. She talks about all the big things she’s going to do to him sexually.”

He said: “She helped him to formulate the plan to run away… she provided him with the wording for a note to leave his mother.”

According to the prosecutor, “She’s been warned before (by the teenager’s parents) not to have contact with him - that he’s too young.”

Lauri had struck up friendship with 16-year-old Andrew Kane while playing a popular online game called the World of Warcraft.

Their long-distance romance blossomed, and the woman flew from Texas to Toronto and drove a rental car to secretly meet her young Canadian lover last week.

The boy’s parents had come to know of his relationship with the much older woman, and had warned him against chatting with her.

But the two lovers continued to chat and planned their secret rendezvous.

The boy, who is an eleventh grade student, slipped out of his home at 2 a.m. Tuesday last week, leaving this message: “I don’t know how to explain it to you, but this will show you not only the commitment we have to each other, but also that your fears of her are ill found.”

After a hectic search, the two lovers were spotted by police in a shopping mall while getting ready to go to a movie.