Riverton, Wyoming, police say they have caught a 28-year-old man accused of stealing a vehicle with a 3-month-old baby in it, then abandoning both the car and baby west of the town last month.
Patrick Dushane Brown was charged Tuesday with an enhanced kidnapping charge based on the allegation that he didn’t leave the baby in a safe place after stealing the baby. That carries a penalty of between 20 years and life in prison.
Fremont County Chief Deputy Attorney Tim Hancock also charged Brown with one count of child abuse based on the theory that he cruelly confined the baby by leaving it in the car. That charge is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Brown was caught Monday after Riverton Police Department Detective Sgt. Eric Smits learned he was at a motel in town, Capt. Wes Romero told Cowboy State Daily.
The department released an alert the night of Feb. 9, saying someone had stolen a Ford Escape with a baby in it.
Law enforcement agents found the stolen vehicle west of Riverton at about 8:40 p.m. with the baby in it, but no driver.
The thief fled on foot, according to scanner traffic at the time.
On scene, Cowboy State Daily watched a woman with dark hair arrive near Blue Spruce Lane and Riverview Road where numerous sheriffs deputies and other law enforcement had converged, shouting “My baby! My baby!”
She gathered a crying baby wrapped in a blanket into her arms and walked toward an ambulance that arrived on scene around the same time.
An emergency medical responder carried the baby’s car seat carrier to the ambulance a few paces behind the distraught mother.
One agent speaking on the scanner said emergency medical personnel arrived on scene to check the baby’s condition.
The Hitched Ride
RPD Officer Don Nethicumara took the stolen-vehicle report that night, according to an evidentiary affidavit by RPD Detective Sgt. Eric Smits, filed Tuesday in Riverton Circuit Court.
A person told Nethicumara that the vehicle’s owner had arrived in the area of College Hill Drive and was unloading items from her vehicle, when someone stole her vehicle with the baby still inside it, according to the affidavit and scanner traffic at the time.
It was a 2015 grey Ford Escape with Wyoming plates.
Smits reviewed video surveillance from Central Wyoming College. The Escape had gone south, but he couldn’t tell who the driver was, the investigator noted.
Authorities later found the baby in the vehicle, both abandoned, he noted.
A 34-year-old Riverton man called law enforcement to let them know he’d given a man a ride into town that night, after encountering the man west of Riverton.
Smits wrote that he place where the witness found the man was about a quarter-mile from where the baby was abandoned.
The man had been on the witness’s property, the latter noted.
The witness let the man make a phone call on his phone, he told police.
The affidavit says the witness provided a description of the man and the phone number he’d called. The witness had dropped the man off behind Walgreens in Riverton, since the man said his uncle lived in an apartment near there.
The man said he’d been “jumped,” or beaten up, but the witness didn’t notice injuries suggesting that, says the document.
The Photograph
Provided with a photo lineup of various men, the witness didn’t identify any of them as the man he’d driven to town.
Smits tracked down the phone number the suspect had called.
One of the people at that number said “Patty,” or Brown, had called him that night asking for a ride, according to the document.
This time, Smits produced a second photo lineup for the witness to review, this time with Brown’s photo in it.
The witness picked Brown out of the lineup, the affidavit says.
Smits also spoke with a confidential source, who described hearing Brown talk about stealing a vehicle, then hearing a baby breathing inside it, then reaching back to feel and discovering the baby there, the detective wrote.
The weather was 19 degrees that night, Smits noted.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
