A California community is reeling after hearing the news that a local pastor was allegedly caught trying to meet a person he thought was a minor for sex.

James David Stockton, 54, was arrested on Saturday by Signal Hill police after an online citizen group called "Caught Fished" said it had documented inappropriate messages with the pastor.

'He got into the nasty part that no pastor should be talking about.'

Stockton is the pastor at South Bay Church of God in Torrance. He ran for Congress as a Democrat in 2024, and before that he was a leader of the NAACP in Marion County.

The group provided some of the texts to KTTV-TV and said that Stockton knew the decoy was claiming to be 16 years old and in high school.

"What time you get out of school today?" read one text allegedly from St

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