A federal grand jury recently indicted three Denver men for the kidnapping of a man, his wife and their two young daughters in September 2009, according to a recent KJCT story. The men held the victims for ransom and reward while ransacking their home in search for drugs and money. The man was the primary target due to a drug deal gone sour.
The suspects arranged for the man to deliver cocaine to their house. When he arrived, they attached a GPS tracking device to his car so they could track his whereabouts using a computer to follow the tracking device. The suspects were able to find out where he and his family lived, as well as his daily patterns. Prior to the robbery, one of the suspects obtained a stolen police uniform from a juvenile whose father worked for the police department, in exchange for drugs.
The suspects tracked down the man in Edgewater, Colorado on September 22, 2009. They jumped out of their cars and ambushed the man as he and his wife were putting their daughters into their car seats. With guns drawn, they announced they were police officers. One of the suspects ordered the man’s wife’s into the passenger seat at gunpoint as he got into the driver’s seat. He drove her and her children to the victim’s home in Thornton, Colorado. When they got to the home, three to five men, including the suspects, entered the home and started ransacking the home in search for money and drugs.
When the wife denied knowing anything about money or drugs, one of the suspects ordered another man to grab one of the daughters and pointed a gun to the wife’s head as the other guy took the child upstairs. The wife then told them where the money was hidden. The suspects took a box containing $30,000, jewelry, a camera and a watch before fleeing the house in different vehicles.
In the meantime, the men who had taken her husband in another vehicle put him out on 104th Avenue in Thornton and pulled off, leaving him.
Two of the suspects are in police custody, but the third remains a fugitive. If convicted, all three men face at least 20 years in jail on charges of kidnapping and conspiracy to kidnap and rob an individual. These men committed a Class 2 felony offense, where a person was forcibly removed from one location to another without his consent nor without lawful authority, a children under 18 was taken with the intent to keep them from their parents with the intent to barter, sell or trade the children for consideration, and the victims were unharmed prior to conviction. A Colorado criminal defense attorney can explain state kidnapping laws in greater detail, as well as your rights under those laws as a defendant.