Four adults have been charged in connection with a "fake kidnapping" designed to teach a 6-year-old about stranger danger, a sheriff's spokesman said Thursday. (Source: Fox2Now.com)
Denise Kroutil, 38, asked a co-worker, Nathan Firoved, 23, to pretend to kidnap her young nephew to “scare” him because he was “too nice” to people, authorities said.
The boy’s mother, Elizabeth Hupp, 25, and grandmother Rose Brewer, 58, went along with the plan, even though they did not even know the “fake” kidnapper’s last name, authorities said.
On Feb. 2, authorities said, Firoved waited near the boy’s bus stop and lured him into his truck after school. Fired allegedly told the frightened boy he would never see his mom again and threatened to nail him “to the wall of a shed.”
Authorities said it didn’t stop there.
When the 6-year-old started crying, Firoved allegedly pulled a gun on the child, told him to stop crying, tied his hands and feet with plastic bags, covered his face with a jacket and drove the boy to the boy’s own home, where he was carried to the basement and left alone for awhile.
Still, there was more.
The boy’s aunt, Kroutil, allegedly went to the basement, pulled the child’s pants down and shouted that he could be sold into sex slavery, then scolded him for not trying to resist.
Authorities said the child was left in the basement for even longer, and when he was finally untied and allowed upstairs, he was lectured about stranger danger.
In all, authorities said, the ordeal lasted about four hours.
The boy apparently learned something about resisting because he told school officials what happened. That triggered a call to family services; the child was taken into protective custody.
All four adults were jailed on $250,000 cash-only bonds and charged with varying degrees of kidnapping, felonious restraint and child abuse. (Source: KSDK.com)