Two Men Lured By Sex: One Escapes From Car Trunk, The Other Found Dead In Burned Vehicle
(CBS) – Live or die: That's the choice a restrained man locked in a car trunk was facing Wednesday afternoon.
Surveillance video shows how the victim seized the opportunity after he slipped out of his bonds. He was able to pull the emergency trunk release and escape into a nearby store to get help.
A clerk at that Riverdale store tells CBS 2 the man ran in bloodied with duct tape on his wrists, yelling, "Help me! Help me! People are trying to kidnap me!"
The clerk called police, who later learned there were two victims, each robbed and then bound and gagged and placed in separate vehicles.
They both had come to a house on University Avenue near 144th Street in Dolton. Dolton Police Cmdr. Darryl Hope indicates the men were invited to the home by text messages, from a woman.
Sources say the premise of the visits was sex, but when each man arrived, he was attacked by at least two other men.
"I don't think it was random," Hope says.
Police say inside the home, the attackers beat the men and stole their valuables, including credit and debit cards. The men were then thrown in the trunks of two cars, as their attackers drove to an ATM.
"That is brazen, and it's a serious crime," Hope says.
Police found the car – the one from which the man escaped -- abandoned behind the store where he fled. The occupants then got into the other vehicle, with the second male victim.
That victim didn't get away. His body was found in a burned car in Chicago, with a gunshot to the head.
Dolton Police say investigators are following promising leads in the case and expect to make at least one arrest soon.
The offenders "should be taken seriously," the police commander says. "They are armed and they're a threat to everyone."