Car-smack ‘kidnap’
Fender-bender driver abducted
A Brooklyn fender-bender sparked a bizarre kidnapping-for-ransom plot when a deliveryman’s van collided with a car — and two thugs launched into a shakedown, police said Tuesday.
“I was scared for my life — but you can’t show any emotion,” the 32-year-old van driver, who was delivering diapers, told The Post.
The delivery worker, who asked that his name not be published, said he was parking a company van at Gates and Central avenues in Bushwick at about noon Monday when he accidentally backed into a Hyundai, according to cops.
A suspect nearby, Rondell Halley, 33, falsely claimed to own the Hyundai and demanded to be paid for the damage without involving insurance companies, cops said. He then called his friend, Francisco Jimenez, 24, who drove up in a white BMW and flashed a gun, police said.
“I have a strap, and we don’t play,” Jimenez growled to the van driver, according to cops.
The thugs then forced the deliveryman to call his boss and ask for $700 in ransom cash, supposedly to pay for the dented car, police said.
“I kept my composure. I just kept my mouth shut and told them, ‘ You gotta deal with my boss,’ ” the deliveryman said.
His 29-year-old employer agreed to meet the goons and give them money at a Manhat- tan Chase branch — but then quickly called police.
When the suspects arrived at the branch — at 72nd Street and Broadway on the Upper West Side — with the delivery guy in tow at about 3 p.m., cops pounced.
The BMW driver hit the gas and slammed into a building on West 71st Street near Broadway.
Both Halley and Jimenez then tried to bolt on foot, police said.
One suspect dashed into a building and the other fled up an eight-story-high fire escape, but they were caught by police.
In the Beemer was a .25-caliber gun, 40 grams of heroin and cocaine, cops said.
On Tuesday, Captain Timothy Malin of the 20th Precinct said: “[This is] one of the strangest cases that I’ve been a part of in the 18½ years I’ve been with the New York City Police Department.”
Neither Halley nor Jimenez is a registered owner of the Hyundai, he said.
The kidnapping was so traumatic, the victim said he has since left the job.
“I quit. You never know where you might encounter someone again,” he said. “I’m not going to go to Brooklyn again for a while.”
Halley and Jimenez, both with lengthy rap sheets, were charged with kidnapping, possession of narcotics and illegal possession of a weapon.