text: James Wesley Howell, 20, of Indiana, appears in Superior Court in Los Angeles Tuesday, June 14, 2016. Howell faces felony weapons charges after authorities say they found assault rifles and explosive... (Associated Press) 
   
   James Wesley Howell, 20, of Indiana, appears in Superior Court in Los Angeles Tuesday, June 14, 2016. Howell faces felony weapons charges after authorities say they found assault rifles and explosive chemicals in his car in Santa Monica, Calif., on June 12, before a major Los Angeles gay pride parade.... (Associated Press) 
   
   INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — An Indiana man facing weapons and ammunitions charges in California after telling officers he was headed to a gay pride event was charged Wednesday in Indiana with child molestation — allegations that apparently spurred his cross-country journey to Los Angeles, a prosecutor said. 
   
   James Wesley Howell, 20, faces one count of child molesting in southern Indiana's Clark County. If convicted, the Jeffersonville, Indiana, man could face up to 16 years in prison. 
   
   Clark County Prosecutor Jeremy Mull told The Associated Press that Howell took a 12-year-old girl to a state forestry property May 31 and had sex with her. Mull said Howell met the girl through an adult friend. 
   
   The girl's mother reported the allegations to police June 2 after learning about them. 
   
   A message seeking comment was left Wednesday for Howell family lawyer Bobby Boyd of Louisville, Kentucky. Telephone calls to Pamela Jones, Howell's public defender in the California weapons case, rang unanswered. 
   
   Mull said Howell was interviewed on June 7 by a police detective in the molestation case and apparently left Indiana at some point after speaking to the officer. 
   
   He said it's a "logical conclusion to draw" that Howell traveled to California to flee the child molestation investigation. But he said he doesn't know what Howell's intentions were in California. 
   
   "He did flee and go to California, where he was apprehended on June 12. So there was a very short window of time between the time he became aware he was under investigation here and when he ended up in California," Mull said. 
   
   He said he intends to have Howell extradited to Indiana to face the molestation charge. 
   
   California authorities charged Howell on Tuesday with three felony weapons and ammunition charges after he was found in Santa Monica with a loaded assault rifle with magazines rigged to allow 60 shots to be fired in quick succession, plus 15 pounds of chemicals mixed and ready to explode. 
   
   Howell has pleaded not guilty to those charges. A Los Angeles County judge set Howell's bail at $2 million. 
   
   He was arrested in Santa Monica early Sunday, hours after an attack at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida left 49 people dead. 
   
   Howell told police he was headed to a gay pride event in West Hollywood that attracts hundreds of thousands of people. It's unclear whether he intended any violence at the LA Pride event, but his arrest put police and event organizers on heightened alert. 
   
   Friends in Indiana described Howell as a gun enthusiast with a short temper. In October, he twice was accused of pulling a gun and making threats, once against a boyfriend and once against a neighbor. 
   
   Howell was convicted in April of misdemeanor intimidation for the incident with his neighbor. Under the terms of his probation, he was not allowed to have weapons or leave Indiana. 
   
   Court documents in the Indiana molestation case state that the 12-year-old girl had "developed a crush on (Howell) and wanted to go to a car event with him." Howell, the girl's brother and the brother's girlfriend were all members of the same "car club" and periodically attended meetings where people show off their cars, documents say. 
   
   The girl's mother gave Howell permission to attend the car event and afterward, Howell offered to take the girl to the home of a family friend she considered her grandmother, court documents say. 
   
   According to the affidavit, he first took the girl to the state forestry property before taking her to the family friend's house. 
   
   Federal agents searched Howell's Jeffersonville home on Monday but declined to release any details. ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites.
target: – It still isn't clear what James Howell was doing en route to an LA Pride event with weapons and explosives in his car—police say he had no connection to the Orlando shooting—but we now know more about him: The 20-year-old Indiana man was charged with child molestation Wednesday after allegedly having sex with a 12-year-old girl on May 31. A Clark County prosecutor—who plans to have Howell extradited back to Indiana—tells the AP that Howell and the girl's brother are members of the same car club and that the girl attended a car event with Howell. Afterward, Howell offered to drive the girl to the home of a family friend but first stopped at a forested area, where Howell molested her, the prosecutor says. The girl's mom went to police two days later and Howell was interviewed on June 7. Police say he admitted to fleeing Indiana "due to his concerns over existing or pending criminal charges" after he was found early Sunday with a loaded assault rifle, Taser, hood, magazines, handcuffs, and 15 pounds of explosive chemicals that "posed a grave danger to both persons and property," per the Los Angeles Times. He faces up to 16 years if convicted of child molestation, and more than nine years if convicted of felony weapons charges, including possession of explosives on a highway, possession of an assault weapon, and possession of high-capacity magazines. Howell—who friends describe as a gun enthusiast—was convicted of misdemeanor intimidation in April after allegedly pulling a gun on a neighbor and wasn't allowed to have weapons or leave Indiana. His bail is set at $2 million.