Charges: Jose Chapa-Aguilera Allegedly Kidnapped, Assaulted Man In Brooklyn Park Home
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) - A man from Lino Lakes has been charged and arrested for allegedly kidnapping, tying up, and assaulting a man last month.
Jose Angel Chapa-Aguilera, 23, faces one count of first-degree assault and one count of kidnapping in Hennepin County.
According to the criminal complaint, Brooklyn Park officers responded to a home on Ronald Place on Dec. 21. There, they found a man covered in blood, who said he had been held captive at a neighboring house since the day before.
He said that on Dec. 20, he had driven two women - one of whom he knew - to a home in Brooklyn Park. They asked him to come inside, and there he met Chapa-Aguilera, who allegedly pulled out a handgun and held it to the man's head.
Chapa-Aguilera reportedly accused the man of being in a dispute with one of the women, and tied the man's hands behind his back and kicked him. He then heat up a kitchen knife and burned the man, and beat him with a pipe for roughly two hours, the complaint says.
All the while, the complaint says the two women, one of whom was Chapa-Aguilera's girlfriend, did not intervene.
Court documents go on to say that Chapa-Aguilera put the victim in a crawl space under the home overnight and filmed him. Eventually the victim was able to escape when Chapa-Aguilera and his girlfriend left the home.
A neighbor says the victim came to his door after escaping. He said the man was screaming for help.
According to the neighbor, the victim's eye was swollen shut the size of a golf ball. He could see burns through holes in the man's shirt and his hands were tied so tightly behind his back with a dog leash that the neighbor couldn't undo it.
He said he doesn't know how the victim escaped but that it was a miracle.
Officers searched the home and found the crawl space. They also found cocaine and methamphetamine throughout the house, the complaint says.
The victim suffered extensive injuries and was hospitalized for several days.
The two women were charged as co-defendants in separate complaints. Chapa-Aguilera was arrested on Friday around 6:30 p.m. on Interstate 94. He attempted to flee, Brooklyn Park police said, and the pursuit ended when the vehicle he was in wedged into a guard rail near State Highway 169.
He is in custody at the Brooklyn Park jail.
If convicted, the kidnapping charge carries a maximum 40-year sentence.