Three men suspected of kidnapping teen boy from San Bernardino County
Three men were arrested for kidnapping a 17-year-old boy from San Bernardino County.
The men were charged in a federal criminal complaint alleging they kidnapped the boy from Highland and held him nearly 200 miles away in Santa Maria for ransom.
Fidel Jesús Patino Jaimes, 22, Jair Tomás Ramos Domínguez, 26, of Santa Maria, and Ezequiel Felix López, 27, were identified as the suspects by the U.S. Department of Justice.
The men, who told law enforcement officials they were from Santa Maria, were arrested Friday morning and charged with the suspected kidnapping that evening. This felony carries a statutory maximum sentence of life imprisonment, the DOJ reported.
The defendants are expected to appear in U.S. District Court in Riverside on Monday afternoon.
The apprehension of the suspects was a joint effort between the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, Santa Maria Police Department, and the FBI.
“Few things can be as terrorizing to a parent as having your child kidnapped and held for ransom under threat of physical harm,” said U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada in a written statement. “Together with the FBI and our local law enforcement partners, we have acted swiftly to rescue the victim and bring the abductors to justice. I commend the agents and officers for their heroic efforts to free the victim and prevent a devastating tragedy from occurring.”
The incident
According to an affidavit filed with the complaint, on the morning of Sept. 18, the defendants allegedly caused a traffic accident in which the victim – a 17-year-old boy – crashed into their silver-colored Jeep Grand Cherokee.
After the collision, the victim exited his vehicle. At that point, the defendants allegedly grabbed the victim and forced him into their vehicle, the DOJ stated.
On the afternoon of Sept. 18, the victim’s mother received a call from a Mexican phone number. The caller demanded the delivery of $500,000 to an unspecified location in Nogales, Mexico, for the victim and said that the abduction was the fault of the victim’s father, according to authorities.
Shortly after, a different Mexican telephone number was used to send a WhatsApp video to the victim’s mother’s cellphone.
The video showed the victim in the backseat of the Jeep Grand Cherokee and reading from a script, saying that the abduction was his father’s fault for an incident that occurred in New York, and saying, “You know what you stole,” the DOJ stated.
For several days afterward, the victim’s mother received multiple phone calls from different Mexican telephone numbers in which the speaker demanded payment and threatened to cut off the victim's body parts if payment wasn’t made. The ransom demand, which went unpaid, was reduced to $100,000.
Tracking down the suspects
Law enforcement officials tracked the defendants down to a motel in Santa Maria, partly by identifying the vehicle used during the kidnapping in a Facebook Marketplace posting and reviewing Ring door camera footage.
During the execution of a search warrant at one of the motel’s rooms on Friday morning, law enforcement found the victim lying on the floor in the corner of the room and the three defendants – one of whom tossed a firearm onto the floor, according to the affidavit.
A criminal complaint contains allegations. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law, the DOJ stated.
The FBI and the sheriff’s department are investigating this matter.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Sean D. Peterson of the Riverside Branch Office prosecutes the case.
This article originally appeared on Victorville Daily Press: Three men suspected of kidnapping teen boy from San Bernardino County
