FBI: Team has rescued NC kidnap victim in Atlanta
ATLANTA (AP) — A North Carolina man reported missing from his home days ago was the target of a kidnapping plot, and he was rescued Wednesday from an apartment complex in Atlanta, the FBI said Thursday.
An elite FBI team safely rescued Frank Arthur Janssen shortly before noon Wednesday, FBI spokeswoman Shelley Lynch said in a statement.
Janssen was reported missing April 5 from his Wake Forest, N.C., home, according to the FBI. An investigation by the FBI, Wake Forest police and other law enforcement agencies had determined that Janssen had been the victim of a kidnapping and was being held in the apartment complex in Atlanta's southeast section, the FBI said.
The statement said Janssen's family was notified of Janssen's rescue after the team freed the man at about 11:55 p.m. Wednesday. The FBI said the family looked forward to being reunited with him but that no further details were being released early Thursday amid what the agency described as an "active and ongoing" investigation.
Lynch told AP by phone early Thursday that she had no additional information to immediately release on the rescue and how it was carried out, a possible kidnapping motive or whether anyone had been hurt in the rescue or arrests made. She said a news conference was planned later Thursday in Wake Forest, N.C., by law enforcement officials.
The FBI describes its Hostage Rescue Team on the agency website as a national level counterterrorist unit, offering a tactical option for any extraordinary hostage crisis or other law enforcement situation in the U.S. The FBI says the unit, established in 1983, responds to the most urgent and complex FBI cases.
