Free Republic

A Florida woman has been arrested and charged after allegedly posing as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in order to kidnap her ex-boyfriend’s current wife, according to police. On Thursday, April 10, 52-year-old Latrance Battle allegedly went to the location of a hotel chain where the woman worked and approached the woman, claiming to be an ICE agent there to detain her, according to an arrest affidavit the Miami Herald reported. In a statement on the Bay County Sheriff’s Office’s Facebook page, officers said Battle arrived wearing a black shirt with “ICE” printed on the front, a business...

Bayron Wuifredo Santos-Recarte, a 27-year-old Honduran national and member of the notorious MS-13 gang, has been sentenced to 135 months in prison for kidnapping, retaliating against a federal witness, and unlawful possession of a firearm. Court documents revealed that on November 5, 2023, Santos-Recarte and other MS-13 associates kidnapped a former federal witness at gunpoint from a laundromat parking lot in Nashville. The victim had previously testified against MS-13 members in a federal racketeering trial, where he detailed attempts on his life over a drug A recent federal press release reveals that during the kidnapping, the victim was held in...

McMahon and his accomplice Zhu Yong conducted surveillance to harass and intimidate Americans on behalf of China

A Venezuelan criminal gang that for the past few years has been extending its operations and causing havoc throughout Latin America has made an appearance in South Florida, police say, claiming that at least one of its members was involved in a recent Miami murder. José Luis Sánchez Valera, a 43-year-old retired Venezuelan police officer who lived in Doral, was lured by women into a hotel room in Miami in late November and killed after he was abducted in the parking lot. Yurwin Salazar, 23, a Venezuelan immigrant who lives in South Florida, has been charged with the murder. According...

A group of more than 30 migrants, most of them Chinese citizens, was found inside a U-Haul truck Friday after a report of an alleged abduction, Florida authorities said. The discovery began when a security guard for a homeowners association in the Miami suburb of Coral Gables reported seeing an abduction around 9:35 a.m., Coral Gables Police Chief Edward James Hudak Jr. told reporters. The guard reported seeing a Toyota and a U-Haul truck involved in the incident and immediately alerted a patrol officer.. The officer then issued a BOLO, a be on the lookout alert, for the vehicles. The...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 (Yonhap) -- The United States will take issue with the kidnapping of a Korean-American pastor by North Korean agents at future six-party talks over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program, a South Korean interpreter close to the case said Tuesday. "U.S. State Department officials said they will raise the issue of the abduction of Rev. Kim Dong-shik with the North through various channels, including the six-way talks," said Chang Hak-keun, a South Korean interpreter who assisted Rev. Kim's wife during her visit to the State Department on Tuesday afternoon. Rev. Kim's wife, Chung Young-hwa, met State Department officials...

The masked stranger caught on video trying to rip a 6-year-old Hasidic boy out of his dad’s arms in Brooklyn over the weekend was busted for the broad-daylight terror, cops said. Stephan Stowe, 28, a gangbanger with 33 prior arrests, was picked up early Sunday and charged with attempted kidnapping — several hours after he tried to yank the young boy away from his dad in Crown Heights, authorities and sources said. The boy’s father was holding hands with his two sons and walking on Kingston Avenue near Empire Boulevard when the menace approached the family and snatched the boy...

New York City prosecutors have charged four Iranian spies with plotting to kidnap a U.S. journalist from Brooklyn, smuggling her out of the city on a speedboat then sailing down to Venezuela before flying to Tehran, after she criticized the regime for its human rights abuses. Masih Alinejad, 44, a producer with Voice of America, told NBC News that she was the target of the plot. She was not named in court documents. The conspirators, described as intelligence officials, had also plotted to lure a person in the UK and three others in Canada to Iran, an indictment said. They...

Iran said on Saturday it had arrested the head of a US-based “terrorist group” accused of being behind a deadly 2008 bombing in the southern city of Shiraz and planning other attacks. “Jamshid Sharmahd, who was leading armed and sabotage operations inside Iran, is now in the powerful hands” of Iran’s security forces, state television said, citing an intelligence ministry statement. It did not elaborate on where or when the alleged leader of the opposition royalist group known as the Kingdom Assembly of Iran, or Tondar (Farsi for Thunder), was detained. Iran slammed its arch enemy the United States for...

A boy is back home and on the mend after his father kidnapped him in May and set a car on fire with the child still inside. Bennett Dornellas, 3, suffered third-degree burns on 90 percent of his body, but was still pictured smiling in the days before his release Monday. His father, 32-year-old Joshua Bennett Dornellas, was arrested after leading deputies on a chase that began in South Caroline and ended in Georgia with the car engulfed in flames. It began with the violent assault of Bennett and his mother at the family's home in Anderson County, cops said...

The United States managed to arrest Mexico’s most-wanted drug lord, but Mexican prosecutors — and the president — now say they are considering bringing treason charges against those who handed him over. It’s part of the long, strange trail of Sinaloa cartel leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, who unexpectedly appeared on a flight that landed near El Paso, Texas in July. That private plane flight was arranged by another drug capo who decided to turn himself in. U.S. officials say Joaquín Guzmán López — a son of imprisoned cartel leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán — flew to the United States...

A Maryland man accused of kidnapping and killing a Bethel Park woman after leaving her tied to a signpost in the Nevada desert has been charged federally with kidnapping resulting in death. John Matthew Chapman, 39, was named in an FBI complaint filed Monday in U.S. District Court and will appear before a judge next month. Chapman is accused of kidnapping and murdering Jaime Feden, 33, with whom he had a tumultuous relationship. After the killing, the FBI said, he lived at her house and posed as her on Facebook Messenger to thwart attempts by her friends and relatives to...

Oklahoma prosecutors have charged a fifth member of the anti-government group “God’s Misfits” with the killing and kidnapping of two Kansas women. Paul Jeremiah Grice, 31, is now facing two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of kidnapping and conspiracy to commit murder in Texas County. The charges stem from the deaths of Veronica Butler, 27, and Jilian Kelley, 39, of Hugoton, Kansas. According to an arrest affidavit, Grice admitted to an Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation agent that he was involved in the killing and burial of Butler and Kelley, the wife of Pastor Heath Kelley, who leads...

Law enforcement officials issued an Amber Alert Thursday morning for missing 2-year-old Rayilee Ariyah Rose Coleman. She’s a Black girl, approximately 3 feet tall with black hair and brown eyes, and a mole in her right armpit, according to the Harnett County Sheriff’s Office. Earlier, police said she may have been taken by 37-year-old Dyatsy Oneal Coleman, the child’s father. The two could be headed toward the Grove, Faison or Clinton areas. Rayilee was last seen in a yellow dress with butterflies and flowers on it, with blue tights. Dyatsy was wearing a long-sleeve black shirt and blue jeans, according...

Charlotte Sena, the 9-year-old girl who went missing last weekend while on a bike ride at an upstate New York park, has been found, police announced Monday evening. "Charlotte Sena has been located and in good health. A suspect is in custody," New York State Police said in a statement. "This is still an active investigation." New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said at a Monday night news conference that the case started to break around 4:20 a.m. Monday morning, when a car pulled up to the mailbox at the family’s home and left what turned out to be a ransom...

The last three men to stand trial in connection with a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer have been found not guilty on all counts.Eric Molitor and twin brothers William Null and Michael Null were among the 14 men charged in state and federal court over the alleged plan to kidnap the governor at her vacation home in Antrim County in 2020, largely over the Democratic governor's strict COVID-19 shutdowns.Molitor, 39, and the Null brothers, both 41, had pleaded not guilty to state charges of providing material support for terrorist acts and illegally possessing firearms.

The Alabama woman who confessed to faking her own abduction, prompting a massive two-day search, has been charged with two misdemeanors in connection with the headline-grabbing hoax – though police admit they still “have no idea” where she actually went. Carlee Russell, a 26-year-old nursing student, was charged on Friday with one count of false reporting to law enforcement and one count of falsely reporting an incident after she “disappeared” on July 13. Both counts are class A misdemeanors that carry a maximum penalty of one year behind bars and a $6,000 fine, Hoover Police Chief Nick Gerzis said at...

A man with a 28-page rap sheet who police said “should not have been on the street” was arrested Thursday in the attempted abduction of a 14-year-old girl at a mall in Pennsylvania. Khalilh Evans, 44, is accused of attempting to abduct the teen at the Willow Grove Park Mall after she became separate from her friends while shopping. Abington Detectives identified the suspect and issued a warrant for Evans’ arrest, charging him with false imprisonment of a minor, a second-degree felony. Evans was arrested Thursday with the assistance of the Philadelphia Police Department and the U.S. Marshal’s Office after...

The 15-year-old Ukrainian schoolgirl was taken one warm morning last October. Like everyone else in Kherson, a city on the estuary of the Dnipro river in southern Ukraine, Yevheniia's family were still adjusting to life under Russian control. Putin's tanks and troops had poured into the city seven months earlier, soon after the invasion of Ukraine began. Now there were checkpoints, military police, rumours of Russian brutality; of women being raped. Ukraine was fighting to get the city back and there was a constant risk of shelling. Few people went out after 5pm. In the apartment where the teenager lived...

The Mexican city of Culiacán descended into terror on Thursday, when soldiers and police launched a raid to capture one of the heirs to the throne of jailed Mexican kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. As state forces advanced into the city, the Sinaloa Cartel hit back with an array of military-style weapons — and won. Mexican officials briefly detained Ovidio Guzman, one of Guzman’s sons who has emerged as a leading figure in the cartel after his father was arrested in 2016. But in response the cartel freed dozens of prisoners from a local jail, set numerous vehicles alight and...