LOWELL, NC (WBTV) - Karen Vaughn was in for a big surprise when she found an unfamiliar app on her phone late this summer.



The app, it turns out, had been downloaded by her teenage daughter. When Vaughn opened it, she found her daughter had been using it to secretly message a police officer nearly four times her age.



"I didn't want to believe it. But after it came to reality, I wanted to hang him," Vaughn said.



The most recent messages sent using the app were from her daughter, who had recently turned 14, to Lowell Officer James Blair telling him she was pregnant.



"A 14-year-old shouldn't be having a baby. Especially by a police officer that I thought was upholding the law," Vaughn said.



That exchange prompted Vaughn to call Gaston County Police, who requested the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation to handle the case, court records show.



Blair was arrested in September on a charge of statutory rape. He was initially booked on a $1 million bond. That bond was unexpectedly reduced in November, though, to just $250,000.



Blair would have to put up just ten percent of that amount in order to be released from jail before trial.



"I didn't feel safe at all. My world has been torn up, so I didn't feel safe at all," Vaughn said.



What was more unsettling, though, was a series of text messages Vaughn said she and her daughter received from Blair's daughter.



A sample of the text messages obtained by On Your Side Investigates shows Blair's daughter texted Vaughn and her daughter multiple times after visiting Blair in jail.



The text messages included requests from Vaughn for a visit in jail and other messages asking that the statutory rape charge be dropped.



"I went to the point of calling the jail three times a day, seeing if he got out, that's how terrified I was. I panicked because I don't know what's on his mind, what he's going to do," Vaughn said.



The continued messages, partnered with the prospect that Blair could be released from jail, prompted Vaughn to seek a protective order from a judge.



That order was granted in early December.



A phone message left with Blair's attorney was not returned by deadline for this story.



For her part, Vaughn said she wants to see Blair punished for what he did.



"One-hundred years is not enough," Vaughn said of the time she hopes he spends in prison. "Nobody should sleep sound until he is in prison… He's a predator."