Four men were arrested and charged with kidnapping migrants who had been smuggled into the United States and demanding their relatives pay ransom for their release, officials said Monday.
The men have pleaded not guilty after they were arraigned on an indictment, the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles said . A fifth man has been charged in the case but remains a fugitive, prosecutors said in a statement.
The defendants took the four migrants from an Arizona gas station last year and later held them hostage at a house in California, prosecutors said. The suspects allegedly used one of the hostage’s cellphones to demand ransom money from the victim’s family member in exchange for their release.
Three of the hostages were later moved to a motel where one escaped through a second-story bathroom window and ran to a nearby store, the statement said. One of the suspects followed him and “body-slammed the victim, placed him in a chokehold, and punched him repeatedly in the face in an attempt to re-kidnap him,” the statement said.