Free Republic

Four kidnapping suspects were arrested in Florida after a woman in her 40s was allegedly held captive in a dog cage before making a daring escape, knocking on several doors pleading with neighbors for help. Monica Latresis Reed, 37, Cortez Jackson, 39, Kevin Holmes, 21, and Damon Tromp, 19, have since been charged with armed kidnapping with intent to commit a felony and false imprisonment with a weapon, according to the Orange County Sheriff’s Office. Reed is facing an additional count of aggravated battery with a firearm after police say she allegedly pistol whipped the unnamed victim in the cheek...

Days after one of the over 6,600 investors who helped crowdfund the box office hit “Sound of Freedom” was arrested on kidnapping charges, the studio behind the film is clarifying its fundraising policy.Fabian Marta, 51, of Missouri, was arrested by St. Louis police on July 21 and charged with felony child kidnapping. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison.According to a report from a local CBS affiliate, Marta allegedly “helped somebody who had unlawfully taken her children and interfered with the return of the two children to their lawful parent by refusing to allow police access to...

A man with ties to nearly a dozen states is in federal custody after he allegedly kidnapped a woman and kept her in a cinder block cell in an Oregon home. FBI investigators believe there may be additional victims. The FBI announced that 29-year-old Negasi Zuberi — also known as Sakima, Justin Hyche and Justin Kouassi — is in federal custody for the interstate kidnapping after the woman escaped from the makeshift cell, beating her hands bloody in the process. On Saturday, July 15, 2023, Zuberi traveled from his Klamath Falls home to Seattle where he solicited a prostitute then...

An American nurse and her daughter have been abducted in Haiti, in the latest kidnapping episode to draw international notice, as a resurgence of violence grips the capital, Port-au-Prince. In a brief statement on Saturday, El Roi Haiti, a faith-focused humanitarian organization, identified the woman as Alix Dorsainvil, the group’s community nurse and the wife of the group’s director. She and her child were taken from El Roi’s campus near the capital on Thursday, according to the statement. No further details have been made public. “We are aware of reports of the kidnapping of two U.S. citizens in Haiti,” a...

A black woman who sparked a nationwide manhunt by claiming she was kidnapped in Alabama by a white man with "orange hair" admitted through her lawyer on Monday that she made it all up. From The Independent, "Carlee Russell claimed she was kidnapped by a man with orange hair. It was all a lie":Carlethia "Carlee" Nichole Russell seemed to vanish on 13 July after calling 911 to report she had seen a toddler walking on the side of Interstate 459 in Alabama.The 25-year-old told dispatch she stopped her car to check on the child, and called a family member before...

Here's the "explanation," which is near the end of the story: When a story about a possible crime sparks national attention to the extent this one did, it doesn’t happen in a vacuum. The reactions are informed not only by the facts of the case, but filtered through broader contexts that exist outside the particulars of the incident. And those responses can tell us a lot about the culture in which we live. The public concern about Russell’s case was driven in part by the understanding that Black women rarely receive the same amount of attention that white women get...

Despite the promise of Dobbs to free the states from federal court interference with abortion policy, Idaho now faces its third federal lawsuit. This last suit is challenging the new law passed this last session which makes it a felony to transport girls out of state to get an abortion without parental consent. During the legislative session, Planned Parenthood threatened numerous times to file a lawsuit. But they are not an official part of this case. Instead, we have three new plaintiffs: a private attorney named Lourdes Matsumoto, the Northwest Abortion Access Fund and the Indigenous Idaho Alliance. They allege...

Cars were seen lining up outside Carlee Russell's Alabama home on Sunday, just a day after her 26th birthday. A dozen cars lined the driveway and around the home, and drew the attention of police in Hoover, Alabama, who drove past the home as people entered and left. Police said Russell delayed additional requests to interview her again about her supposed July 13 disappearance. Russell vanished after calling 911 to report a toddler wandering along an Alabama highway.

The owner of the Woodhouse spa in Birmingham told The Post that she’s been canned, and that her steaming co-workers are “pissed” about their former colleague’s increasingly suspect kidnapping account. Owner Stuart Rome said his staffers were stunned after hearing of Russell’s purported disappearance and did everything in their power to help bring her home.

My home state of California is Bizzarroland, totally over the edge. It was bad enough, but now it has crossed the Rubicon and blown up the bridge and burned the boats. The Golden State is set to take away parental rights and create a police state where a court and judge must (not may) affirm a child’s chosen made-up gender “identity.” But that same California requires permission for a minor to get a tattoo. Make sense of it. I can’t. Soon in California, if the Democrat super-majority gets its way, confused children can be taken from a parent(s) and chemically...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a presidential candidate who proudly touts a hardline immigration stance, is uncharacteristically mum as California officials say they are investigating the circumstances by which dozens of South American migrants were flown to California, purportedly by the state of Florida. DeSantis has not confirmed or denied the state’s involvement with the flights, the first of which arrived in Sacramento on Friday. California officials said the 16 migrants who came off the plane were carrying documents that indicated they were transported through a program run by Florida’s state government. A second flight carrying about 20 migrants landed in...

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) made an apparent threat of kidnapping charges against Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) in a tweet on Monday. The California Democrat was likely referring to a recent flight of more than a dozen immigrants to Sacramento who, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said, possessed "documentation purporting to be from the government of the State of Florida." ".@RonDeSantis you small, pathetic man. This isn't Martha's Vineyard. Kidnapping charges? Read the following," Newsom tweeted, providing a link to California's penal code.

Sanctuary state California and woke Governor Gavin Newsom are investigating 'state-sanctioned kidnapping' after 16 migrants were dropped on the doorstep of a Sacramento church without 'advance warning'. The young Venezuelan and Colombian men and women were dropped off on Friday outside the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sacramento without 'advance warning' and with only a backpack's worth of belongings each, said Eddie Carmona, campaign director at PICO California, a faith-based community organizing group that has been assisting the migrants. The migrants had entered Texas via the southern border. California Governor Gavin Newsom issued a statement to say they had been transported...

We told you the media would run away from this story once the identity of the U-Haul driver was identified. Sai Varshith Kandula, 19, rammed security barricades near the White House early on May 23. Explosives were not found inside the vehicle, but a notebook and duct tape were found in his backpack. There was also a Nazi flag, something the Left zeroed in on like a Tomahawk missile before Mr. Kandula was revealed as the perpetrator. A nonwhite man from Chesterfield, Missouri, committed the crime. It was time for the liberal media to deploy countermeasures. Kandula reportedly wanted to...

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...

A DNA test has confirmed the identity of a Texan woman who was reunited with her family last year after being abducted as a toddler 51 years ago. Melissa Highsmith, now 53, was taken from her parents' Fort Worth home in 1971 by a babysitter when she was just 22 months old She was miraculously reunited with her biological parents - Jeffrie Higshmith, 72; Alta Alpantenco, 73 and siblings - Rebecca Del Bosque, 48; Vicitoria Highsmith, 47; Sharon Highsmith, 45 and Jeffrey Highsmith, 42 - on November 26.

As Twitchy reported earlier, swimmer Riley Gaines, an outspoken opponent of allowing biological males to compete in women’s sports, saw CNN take an interesting tack on her assault by protesters at San Francisco State University. “I was ambushed and physically hit twice by a man,” Gaines recalls, but according to CNN, “A video Gaines posted from the event showed her moving quickly while surrounded by security officers. A protester can be heard shouting ‘trans rights are human rights,’ but the video is shaky and does not appear to show an assault.” Andy Ngo has posted more video from the event,...

Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James is appealing a 2022 court ruling throwing out a state regulation over its glaring illegality. If successful, James' appeal will restore the power to Gov. Kathy Hochul's administration to arbitrarily detain American citizens for indefinite periods and force them into quarantine camps. What is the background? The regulation, Section 2.13 "Isolation and Quarantine Procedures," was adopted and enshrined in the New York Code, Rules and Regulation in February 2022. It went into effect April 22, 2022. This regulation enabled the state commissioner of health to "issue and/or ... direct the local health authority...

The governor of New York has gone back to court seeking permission to detain citizens of her state in quarantine camps – without notice, without rights and for as long as some state-chosen health officials say is needed. The fight arose during COVID-19, when state officials decided they would adopt a new rule giving the state exactly that power. A lawsuit ensued, and the result was that the detention plan was ruled unconstitutional. Gov. Kathy Hochul, through Attorney General Letitia James, now has appealed the court's rejection of her "Isolation and Quarantine Procedures" scheme, according to a report from lawyer...

A self-proclaimed “crypto king” was allegedly kidnapped, reportedly enduring days of torture and assault from attackers demanding a multi-million-dollar ransom,. Aiden Pleterski, 23, of Ontario, Canada, was “taken” from Toronto in December and held hostage by kidnappers demanding at least $3 million, his father and associates said, CTV News Toronto reported. Details of the abduction were revealed in court papers related to a bankruptcy proceeding involving millions of dollars Pleterski allegedly spent living lavishly instead of investing. “They basically held him for approximately three days, drove him around different, various parts of southern Ontario, beat him, tortured him, allowed him...