Two men convicted for kidnapping FBI employee at gunpoint on Pine Ridge

Anna Hamelin Jan 25, 2024 Updated Jan 25, 2024

PINE RIDGE, S.D. - A federal jury has convicted two men in the kidnapping of an FBI employee that took place at gunpoint on Pine Ridge.

On May 5th of 2022, 25-year-old Juan Francisco Alvarez-Sorto of El Salvador, 29-year-old Deyvin Morales of Guatemala, and Karla Alejandra Lopez-Gutierrez traveled from Greeley, Colorado to southwestern South Dakota to distribute methamphetamine, fentanyl, and heroin. During their trip, the three encountered law enforcement officers, and a high-speed chase ensued. Alvarez, Morales, and Lopez hid in a remote area near Red Shirt on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

Alvarez, Morales, and Lopez then decided to carjack the next vehicle to come along the area at which the defendants stopped on BIA Highway 41. At approximately 2:00 a.m. on May 6, 2022, a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Victim Specialist left an unrelated crime scene investigation near Oglala, South Dakota, and began traveling back toward his duty station in Rapid City. The FBI employee was driving his assigned FBI vehicle. As the employee was heading North on BIA 41 near the Badlands overlook on Cuny Table, the suspect vehicle's lights turned on and the vehicle pulled out behind him. The employee, believing he was being pulled over by law enforcement, pulled over.

Alvarez stepped out of his car, walked to the FBI employee's vehicle, pointed a rifle at him, and ordered him to get out of the vehicle. The suspect vehicle blocked the employee from driving away. Morales joined Alvarez, ordering the victim to the ground with a rifle pointed at the back of his head. The FBI employee was robbed of his wallet, money, credit cards, car keys, watch, and personal and work mobile phones. The FBI employee was then ordered to get up, and he was placed in the middle-rear seat of his government-issued vehicle.

Alvarez sat in the front passenger seat of the FBI vehicle and continued to hold the rifle, and Morales, while armed with two handguns in his waistband, was seated in the rear driver’s side seat next to the victim. Lopez got into the driver’s seat, and the FBI employee was taken hostage.As the group traveled North on BIA 41, they told the employee to cooperate and that he would be safe, but if he did not, the group would come after his family and that they knew where he lived.

The group traveled to Hermosa, stopping at the Corner Pantry at the intersection of State Highway 40 and Highway 79. Lopez went inside to purchase gas, and Alvarez immediately locked the doors of the car. Lopez returned with a gas can and zip ties and drove to a gas pump. Alvarez, who was brandishing the firearm, had the zip ties in his possession.

As Lopez got out to pump gas, the doors to the vehicle were momentarily unlocked, and the employee opened the rear driver’s side door, fighting his way out of the vehicle. He slipped out of his jacket to escape Morales' attempts to detain him and sprinted inside the front doors of the gas station to escape. The three defendants then fled from the gas station and drove to Rapid City, where they abandoned the FBI vehicle and switched to another vehicle.

Alvarez and Morales were able to make it back to Greeley, Colorado, where they were ultimately arrested for their roles in the kidnapping and carjacking. 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.

On January 23, 2024,a federal jury convicted Juan Francisco Alvarez-Sorto and Deyvin Morales of the following offenses Kidnapping, Carjacking, Brandishing a Firearm During and about a Crime of Violence, Unlawful Possession of a Firearm by a Prohibited Person, and Unlawful Reentry after Deportation. The jury returned its verdict on each count following a 6-day jury trial in a federal district court in Rapid City, South Dakota.

>>20860198

>Two men convicted for kidnapping FBI employee at gunpoint on Pine Ridge

“Every day, men and women in the Department of Justice respond to incidents of violent crime in South Dakota,” said U.S. Attorney Alison Ramsdell. “This dedication to improving community safety often comes with great personal sacrifice, and as this case unfortunately demonstrates, on occasion, an extreme risk to personal safety. We are grateful to our partners at the FBI for their dogged commitment to this difficult work, and we hope these convictions send a clear message about the lengths the U.S. Attorney’s Office is willing to go to vindicate the rights of victims, no matter who they are.”

“The FBI will not tolerate violence and threats to harm its personnel,” said Special Agent in Charge Alvin M. Winston Sr. of FBI Minneapolis. “Thank you to our law enforcement partners and the USAO-SD for their hard work and unwavering dedication. This verdict stands as a testament to our commitment to ensuring the safety and security of every member of the FBI. Justice will be relentlessly pursued against those who seek to harm or intimidate any of our workforce.”

This case was investigated by the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Investigations and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the South Dakota DCI, the South Dakota Highway Patrol, the Oglala Sioux Tribe Department of Public Safety, the Rapid City Police Department, and the Greeley, Colorado, Police Department, and the Custer and Pennington County Sheriff’s Offices. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jeremy R. Jehangiri and Paige Petersen prosecuted the case. Alvarez, Morales, and co-defendant Karla Alejandra Lopez-Gutierrez were indicted by a federal grand jury in August of 2022 and Alvarez and Morales were indicted again in December of 2023. The charge of kidnapping carries any term of years up to life in custody and/or a $250,000 fine and 5 years of supervised release. The charge of carjacking carries 15 years of custody and/or a $250,000 fine and 3 years of supervised release. The use, carry, and brandishing of a firearm charge carries a mandatory minimum of 7 years and up to life in custody and/or a $250,000 fine and 5 years of supervised release. The unlawful possession of a firearm by a prohibited person charge carries 10 years of custody and/or a $250,000 fine and 3 years of supervised release. The unlawful reentry after deportation charge carries 2 years of custody and/or a $250,000 fine and one year of supervised release. A $100 special assessment to the Federal Crime Victims Fund applies to each count, totaling $500. A sentencing date has not yet been set. The defendants were remanded to the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service.

https://www.newscenter1.tv/news/two-men-convicted-for-kidnapping-fbi-employee-at-gunpoint-on-pine-ridge/article_a8b5372c-bb92-11ee-a0d3-0fcadce009c4.html#1

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>>20855329 Puppy-killer South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem is banned from entering 20% of her own state after being banned by Native American tribes she claimed weretied to drug cartels

>>20855961 burying the lede. Cartels Ravaging S.D. Indian Reservations with Murder, Drugs and Gang Activity

>>20856302 a gang called theGhost Dancersare affiliated with these cartels,”

>>20857430 given proof that Central American gangsters kidnapped an FBI agent while they were trafficking drugs on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 2022.

>>20857457

>Notable

>>20860198

>>20860207

Gang Violence Grows on an Indian Reservation

By Erik Eckholm

Dec. 13, 2009

PINE RIDGE, S.D. — Richard Wilson has been a pallbearer for at least five of his “homeboys” in the North Side Tre Tre Gangster Crips, a Sioux imitation of a notorious Denver gang.

One 15-year-old member was mauled by rivals. A 17-year-old shot himself; another, on a cocaine binge and firing wildly, was shot by the police. One died in a drunken car wreck, and another, a founder of the gang named Gaylord, was stabbed to death at 27.

“We all got drunk after Gaylord’s burial, and I started rapping,” said Mr. Wilson, who, at 24, is practically a gang elder. “But I teared up and couldn’t finish.”

Mr. Wilson is one of 5,000 young men from the Oglala Sioux tribe involved withat least 39 gangs on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.The gangs are being blamed for an increase in vandalism, theft, violence and fear that is altering the texture of life here and in other parts of American Indian territory.

This stunning land of crumpled prairie, horse pastures turned tawny in the autumn and sunflower farms is marred by an astonishing number of roadside crosses and gang tags sprayed on houses, stores and abandoned buildings, giving rural Indian communities an inner-city look.

Groups like Wild Boyz, TBZ, Nomads and Indian Mafia draw children from broken, alcohol-ravaged homes, like Mr. Wilson’s, offering brotherhood, an identity drawn from urban gangsta rap and self-protection.

Some groups have more than a hundred members, others just a couple of dozen. Compared with their urban models, they are more likely to fight rivals, usually over some minor slight, with fists or clubs than with semiautomatic pistols.

Mr. Wilson, an unemployed school dropout who lives with assorted siblings and partners in his mother’s ramshackle house, without running water, displayed a scar on his nose and one over his eye. “It’s just like living in a ghetto,” he said. “Someone’s getting beat up every other night.”

The Justice Department distinguishes the home-grown gangs on reservations from the organized drug gangs of urban areas, calling them part of an overall juvenile crime problem in Indian country that is abetted by eroding law enforcement, a paucity of juvenile programs and a suicide rate for Indian youth that is more than three times the national average.

If they lack the reach of the larger gangs after which they style themselves, the Indian gangs have emerged as one more destructive force in some of the country’s poorest and most neglected places.

While many crimes go unreported,the police on the Pine Ridge reservation have documented thousands of gang-related thefts, assaults — including sexual assaults — and rising property crime over the last three years, along with four murders. Residents are increasingly fearful that their homes will be burglarized or vandalized. Car windows are routinely smashed out.

“Tenants are calling in and saying ‘I’m scared,’ ” Paul Iron Cloud, executive officer of the Oglala Sioux (Lakota) Housing Authority, told the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs in July at a special hearing on the increase of gang activity.

“It seems that every day we’re getting more violence,” Mr. Iron Cloud said.

Perhaps unique to reservations, rivals sometimes pelt one other with cans of food from the federal commodity program, a practice called “commod-squadding.”

As federal grants to Pine Ridge have declined over the last decade, the tribal police force has shrunk by more than half, with only 12 to 20 officers per shift patrolling an area the size of Rhode Island, said John Mousseau, chairman of the tribe’s judiciary committee.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has proposed large increases in money for the police, courts and juvenile programs, and for fighting rampant domestic and sexual violence on reservations.

Christopher M. Grant, who used to head a police antigang unit in Rapid City, S.D., and is now a consultant on gangs to several tribes and federal agencies, has noted the “marked increase in gang activity, particularly on reservations in the Midwest, the Northwest and the Southwest” over the last five to seven years.

The Navajo Nation in Arizona, for example, has identified 225 gang units, up from 75 in 1997.

One group that reaches across reservations in Minnesota,called the Native Mob,is more like the street gangs seen in cities, with hierarchical leadership and involvement in drug and weapons trafficking, Mr. Grant said.

>>20860232

>Gang Violence Grows on an Indian Reservation

Many of the gangs inPine Ridge, like the Tre Tre Crips, were started by tribal members who encountered them in prison or while living off the reservation; others have taken their names and colors from movies and records.

Even as they seek to bolster policing, Pine Ridge leaders see their best long-term hope for fighting gangs in cultural revival.

“We’re trying to give an identity back to our youth,” said Melvyn Young Bear, the tribe’s appointed cultural liaison. “They’re into the subculture of African-Americans and Latinos.But they are Lakota, and they have a lot to be proud of.”

Mr. Young Bear, 42, is charged with promoting Lakota rituals, including drumming, chanting and sun dances.He noted that some Head Start programs were now conducted entirely in Lakota.

Michael Little Boy Jr., 30, of the village of Evergreen, said he had initially been tempted by gang life, but with rituals and purifying sweat lodges, “I was able to turn myself around.” He is emerging as a tribal spiritual leader,working with youth groups to promote native traditions.

Mr. Grant said a survey of young men in South Dakota reservations found that the approach might be helping.

Mr. Wilson, the 24-year-old gang member, said he regretted not learning the Sioux language when he was young and now wondered about his own future.

“I still get drunk and hang with my homeboys, but not like I used to,” he said.

His car, its windows shattered, sits outside his house, so he cannot get to the G.E.D. class he says he would like to attend. His goal is to run a recording studio where his younger half-brother, Richard Lame, 18, could make rap songs. Mr. Lame is finishing high school and says he wants to go to college.

But he admits that he still joined 30 or so homeboys in town to party any chance he got — “for the rush, the thrill.” As he spoke, he was dressed in the dark colors of his set, the Black Wall Street Boyz; his tiny bedroom was decorated with movie posters of Al Pacino as the megalomaniacal drug dealer Tony Montanain “Scarface,” and he wore a black bandanna.

He pulled out a thick sheaf of his rap lyrics and gave an impromptu performance.

Ever since birth

I been waitin’ for death …

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/us/14gangs.html