The three people arrested in connection with the alleged kidnapping of a woman and her 11-month-old daughter in Garner now face federal charges, court records show.
Authorities dropped the kidnapping charges filed in Wake County Wednesday after the federal officials indicted the alleged kidnappers, according to court records.
A woman and her 11-month-old daughter were kidnapped from their Garner home on the night of April 28, police said
Masked people broke into their home and demanded $1 million before taking the woman and her baby, police said
The three people arrested in the case now face federal charges
The kidnapping happened late on April 28, police said. Officials said they arrested two people in connection with the case the next day. Investigators arrested a third person in the case May 2.
Garner police charged Estrada-Hernandez with two counts of first-degree kidnapping, one count of second-degree kidnapping and other charges, according to the SBI.
Estrada-Hernandez and siblings Paola Duran Duran, 25, and Miguel Angel Duran Duran, 23, are accused of breaking into a Garner home and demanding Eliuth Alejandro Martinez give them $1 million. When he refused, they restrained him with duct tape and took his wife, Alondra Michelle Benitez De Jesus, and her young daughter, police said
Benitez and her daughter were found safe in Wake Forest the day after they were taken, police said.
The Duran Duran siblings appeared virtually in a court hearing on April 30 where a judge read their charges and denied bond, calling them both a flight risk. Both are citizens of Mexico.
Law enforcement officials confirmed all three suspects are illegally in the country.
Estrada-Hernandez served time in a North Carolina prison for felony drug trafficking before being released in 2023.
Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman said on May 1 that although the suspects are undocumented immigrants, she expects they will all be prosecuted in North Carolina.
“We are obviously operating in kind of a new era to some extent in the way that ICE has been operating historically, though they leave that person in our custody for them to go through the court system for that case to be processed and those individuals be brought to justice if they're given an active sentence in our prison system,” Freeman said, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
At the time, she said the Duran siblings had been placed under an ICE detainer and are being held at the Wake County Detention Center.
If at some point they are released from state custody, they will go into the custody of Homeland Security, ICE's parent agency, Freeman said.
“We are at the beginning of a process," she said. "Obviously, they've been charged with some fairly serious charges arising out of this incident. And so, we will go through the normal process in court.”
The Duran Duran siblings are charged with two counts of first-degree kidnapping and one count of second-degree kidnapping, and they could face about 20 years in prison on each charge if convicted.
Freeman said convicted offenders typically would serve their sentences here before being subject to deportation.
