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Left: An FBI Victims Specialist was kidnapped along North on BIA 41 near the Badlands overlook on CUNY Table in 2022 (via Google Maps screengrab). Top right: FBI building in Washington, D.C. (Aaron M. Sprecher via AP). Bottom right: Redacted indictment against men who carjacked and kidnapped an FBI specialist.
Two men who kidnapped an FBI victim specialist who unwittingly found himself in their clutches after a brazen carjacking on a stretch of lonely road in South Dakota over a year ago have been convicted by a federal jury.
Alleged drug runners Juan Francisco Alvarez-Sorto, 25, and Deyvin Morales, 29, were lying in wait in May 2022, according to a statement from the Justice Department, ready to pounce on the next driver who could provide them with a different car after they fled police in a high-speed chase that ended in the remote terrain of Red Shirt, South Dakota.
“I expected to be greeted with a friendly tribal partner,” the FBI victim specialist testified in a courtroom last week, according to the Rapid City Journal. “Instead, there was a man with what I thought was a machine gun.”
Prosecutors say that the FBI specialist, whose identity was not released in redacted court records, was driving along Highway 41, which is administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, at around 2 a.m. on his way from an unrelated crime scene outside of Pine Ridge.
Going past an overlook, the agent noticed Alvarez-Sorto and Morales’ parked car, but couldn’t see inside. The lights were off. As he passed, however, the lights suddenly flipped on. Then, the car began following him in the dark.
What would unfold was harrowing. Prosecutors said the specialist initially thought he was being pulled over by official authorities, but quickly realized the men with obscured faces pointing a rifle at him were not members of law enforcement. Ordered to get out of his car, he was pinned to the ground, gun to the back of his head, and robbed of his cash, credit cards, car keys, and cellphones. They then forced him back into the car.
Morales and Alvarez-Sorto were accompanied by a third person, Karla Lopez-Gutierrez, 29. The woman would eventually take a plea deal for her role in the kidnapping and carjacking and testify against her onetime associates, but in the wee hours of May 6, 2022, Lopez was a translator for Morales and Alvarez-Sorto as they sped toward a gas station in Hermosa.
The Rapid City Journal reported that at trial, Lopez claimed she thought they were only going to tie the man up and leave him with his own car after they brought gas back to the vehicle they had ditched.
The FBI specialist reportedly told jurors, however, that Alvarez-Sorto and Morales threatened him after rifling through his phone and noticing pictures of his wife and children. If he exposed them, they knew where he lived, he testified.
There was only a small window of opportunity to flee to safety, and that was when the group needed gas.
In a statement recounting the ordeal this week, the Justice Department said:
Once the group arrived at the gas station, Lopez went inside to purchase gas. As she got out of the vehicle to go inside the gas station, Alvarez locked the doors to the employee’s vehicle, and the doors remained locked while Lopez was out of the vehicle. Lopez then came back … holding a gas can and zip ties. She entered the vehicle and conducted a U-turn and then went to a gas pump.
The FBI employee noticed that after Lopez came back to the vehicle, Alvarez, who was brandishing the firearm, had the zip ties in his possession and was getting them out.
As Lopez got out to pump gas, the doors to the vehicle were momentarily unlocked.
The FBI employee sprang into action, “fought his way out of the vehicle” and crawled over Alvarez who allegedly grabbed at his jacket as he escaped. He told a jury he stumbled as he got out of the car, regained his footing and then “ran like a chicken with my head cut off.”
Morales, Alvarez-Sorto and Lopez fled the gas station and headed toward Rapid City. Gaining access to another vehicle, they eventually got out of South Dakota altogether and made it as far as Greeley, Colorado, before being arrested.
Prosecutors said that “during a search of the residence where Alvarez and Morales were arrested, law enforcement located firearms, including the rifle used during the kidnapping and carjacking, and controlled substances.”
A sentencing date has not yet been set, though all of the parties remain in custody. Alvarez-Soto is an Ecuadorian national and is not in the U.S. legally, prosecutors have disclosed. Morales hails from Guatemala originally but at this time there are no charges involving his residency status.
Kidnapping convictions can lead to life imprisonment and/0r a $250,000 fine plus five years supervised release. Prosecutors said the carjacking charges alone carry a 15 year penalty and the firearm brandishing charges pose a mandatory minimum of 7 years and up to life in custody plus fines in excess of $250,000. Fees are also assessed for unlawful reentry after deportation.
