The girl Wyoming Highway Patrol troopers say they rescued from two kidnappers told her sister before the incident that she was being followed and that someone AirDropped to her a photo of a gun pointed at the house where she was staying, court documents say.
The Wyoming Highway Patrol on Nov. 29 arrested two men who were traveling with a 16-year-old girl, on claims the two men were kidnapping her from her home in Wisconsin.
They struggled with cellphone pings in the sparse state and resorted ultimately to scouring the state’s roadways until they found the girl, the agency said in a statement last week.
The men, 33-year-old Pedro Giron Perez and 22-year-old Alexcer Solis Gomez, remained Monday in the Carbon County Detention Center, the jail confirmed to Cowboy State Daily.
Wyoming court documents say they’re being held under extradition warrants.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have detainers on them both, however, the agency told Cowboy State Daily last week.
At least one of the men was being paid $1,500 to transport the girl to her boyfriend – whom the girl’s sister believed to be involved with “the cartel,” says an evidentiary affidavit filed last week in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin’s circuit court system.
The Narrative
On Nov. 28, Two Rivers Police Department Lt. Aaron Gauthier was dispatched to a home in town for a welfare check on the 16-year-old girl, says the affidavit.
The girl’s sister, whom the affidavit calls “WITNESS 1,” had asked for a police response since the girl was missing.
The sister told police she’d been texting the missing girl; and the latter said she was on the road, and that it was for her family’s safety, according to the affidavit.
“WITNESS 1 stated (the girl’s) boyfriend had become involved with the cartel, and (the girl) believed she was being followed,” says the document. “WITNESS 1 said (the girl) had stated she woke up to an airdropped photo with a gun pointed at the residence she was staying at.”
Gauthier went to a home the missing girl had been visiting, and there met with a 14-year-old girl, “WITNESS 2,” who indicated the girl left her home at around 3 p.m. that day with a Hispanic male who drove a small, dark-colored sedan, the lieutenant wrote.
The affidavit says another officer learned during that investigation that the girl “may be with her boyfriend,” a 20-year-old out of Appleton, Wisconsin, wanted on felony drug offenses.
Gauthier asked dispatch to ping the girl’s phone.
A ping showed her near Monticello, Iowa, reportedly.
Gauthier entered the girl into a missing person’s database and issued a crime alert statewide.
The next day, Nov. 29, the pings showed the girl approaching Wyoming from the Nebraska side, he wrote.
He later learned that the girl had been found in a traffic stop in Wyoming, in a gray 2020 Hyundai with California plates, the affidavit says.
She was with Solis Gomez and Giron Perez, Gauthier wrote.
The girl’s father reportedly told police he’d last seen her Nov. 27, when she left his home with a friend with whom he believed her to be having a sleepover.
Paid Plot
Solis Gomez told Wyoming troopers he was being paid $1,500 to travel from California to Wisconsin to pick up the teen, the document relates from his interview.
Solis Gomez faces a conspiracy kidnapping charge.
Giron Perez faces a charge of being a party to the crime of abduction, says the affidavit.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
