Last night, just past dinner time, Carlesha Freeland-Gaither’s mother tearfully told a crowd that she’d be “bringing her baby home” after police found her abducted daughter in Jessup, Md. And as the evening wore on, disturbing details emerged about the man who police say kidnapped her off a Germantown street.
Here are three new developments from overnight:
1. The suspect has a rap sheet. And it’s long.
Delvin Barnes, a 37-year-old man with Philadelphia connections, was arrested Wednesday, and officials say he’ll be charged federally. But it won’t be his first serious run-in with the law. According to 6ABC, Barnes has at least three prison sentences under his belt. His most recent sentence was eight years in jail for aggravated assault, for which he was released in November 2013.
But even more disturbing is an outstanding warrant for his arrest — he’s being held in Virginia on charges of attempted capital murder, forcible rape, kidnapping, and other charges.
“From my experience and knowledge of him, he has a thing about women and females,” a relative told 6ABC.
2. Carlesha was found in Jessup, Md. Here’s how it all went down.
On Wednesday, a team of federal agents including those from the ATF, FBI and US Marshals based in Baltimore found Freeland-Gaither and Barnes inside a car along the side of the road in central Maryland, according to the Washington Post. Detectives in Philadelphia told reporters that occurred along Waterloo Road, an offshoot of Route 1, in Jessup — a five sq. mi. town that’s home to just over 7,000 people. The Post reports the road is by a shopping center that’s got a Starbucks and an organic grocery store and is across the street from a Maryland State Police barracks.
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Investigators saw that the car had broken windows, according to the Inquirer, and that both Barnes and Freeland-Gaither were in the backseat. The man climbed into the front, and agents drew their guns. He surrendered.
3. This was completely random.
Early reports came in after the kidnapping of Freeland-Gaither and they suggested that she may have had connections to her captor. Family members told members of the media that a suspect may have been a man who had once been obsessed with her. However, police said Wednesday that the the man who they think took her has a long history of violence toward women — including an outstanding warrant for abduction — and that this attack was completely random.