High in the mountains above Los Angeles, the kidnappers pressed a gun against Juan’s stomach and handed him a phone after making a call on FaceTime.
Juan, who testified at a preliminary hearing Tuesday in L.A. County without revealing his last name, said he recognized his neighbor’s face on the screen that morning last February.
Juan said he considered the neighbor, Francisco Javier Perez, a friend. What he didn’t know was his neighbor had a secret life. Perez was a high-level drug trafficker with connections to an unnamed Mexican drug cartel, prosecutors wrote in court papers…