CRANBERRY TWP — An Ohio man faces a hearing this week on charges he tried to solicit sex from a 14-year-old girl after sending her explicit text messages.

Cranberry Township police and state agents arrested Jacob Meadows, 21, of East Palestine on Friday after he traveled here expecting to meet up with the child.

Meadows was later arraigned on four felony charges and is in the Butler County Prison on $150,000 bail.

The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Child Predator Section launched an undercover investigation after learning that the defendant last year began inappropriately texting the girl when she was 13, according to court documents.

State agents between Nov. 13, 2013, and April 25, 2014, assumed the girl’s identity, authorities said, and exchanged about 500 text messages with Meadows.

“The majority of Meadows’ text messages were sexual in nature,” investigators said, “and allegedly centered around either soliciting the ‘girl’ to meet him for sexual activity or encouraging her to send him nude photos.”

The defendant on Friday allegedly sent a series of texts that encouraged the child to sneak out of her father’s house, with the intent that they would go back to his house to have sex.

Later that evening, he arrived in Cranberry Township where local and state law enforcement officers were waiting for him.

Meadows is charged with unlawful contact with a minor, attempted involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, criminal use of a communication facility and sending obscene and other sexual materials to a minor.

A preliminary hearing is set for 9 a.m. Friday at the office of District Judge Dave Kovach in Cranberry Township.

Meadows’ attorney, Michael J. DeRiso of Pittsburgh, could not be reached for comment.