Way to use that U.Va education guys
This is seriously the most ridiculous thing I’ve read all year:
Two University of Virginia students snatched a man off a street corner in the Tysons Corner area, tied him up in a Falls Church motel bathroom and demanded a $500,000 ransom, police said yesterday.
The kidnappers used the victim’s cellphone to make their demands, and police were able to pinpoint the motel after AT&T provided an approximate location in Falls Church as the origin of the calls, court records show.
Fairfax County police and the FBI staked out a motel in that area and spotted two men going in and out of a room there. When an officer and an FBI agent knocked on the door, they were allowed into the room and found the victim bound and gagged with duct tape in the bathtub, a search warrant affidavit states.
Police charged Guanyu Lu, 19, and Baichuan Shu, 19, both of Charlottesville, with abduction with intent to extort money. Both were arraigned yesterday in Fairfax County General District Court and ordered held without bond.
The suspects were second-year engineering students at Virginia, university spokesman Jeff Hanna said. Both are Chinese nationals, as is their victim, a 20-year-old man who was living with a host family in McLean, Fairfax Officer Don Gotthardt said.
H/t to the Virginia Sentinel
WHAT?! This doesn’t make any sense. If I were gonna kidnap someone it wouldn’t be a random 20 year-old dude. Near as I can tell, the two things you’d be looking for in a hostage are 1)someone who’s relatively helpless and harmless (can’t escape or hurt you), and 2)someone who can fetch a ransom (like a kid with rich parents).
So two young international students kidnap a guy their same age who is also an international student (or at least, living with a host family)… something sounds fishy here.
From the Washington Post article:
“Police and the FBI conducted surveillance at the Stratford Motor Lodge, and police obtained records from the motel indicating that Room 27 was registered to a man from Charlottesville, the affidavit states.
The man was a “known associate” of the victim, police said, although Gotthardt said investigators did not know the extent of the relationship.”
It will be interesting to see how this plays out.