FLORIDA
WTSP
10 News Staff and Tammie Fields, WTSP
Lakeland, Florida — A former youth minister at a Lakeland church has been arrested for allegedly having sex with a 15-year-old girl sometime between November of last year and January.
On Monday, the pastor of Mt. Tabor Baptist Church told Polk Sheriff’s detectives a church member told him that Phillip Kendrick II had sex with a young church member he’d met four years ago at the church.
“I never believed something like this would ever happen,” said Pastor Matt Gilmore. “We’re saddened, shocked and we’re providing care to both his family and to the victim and her family as well.”
Pastor Gilmore says they have 80 to 100 members at the church. He says he’s known Kendrick for 11 years and served with him at two different churches, but not now.
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