Man pleads guilty to kidnapping teenager
Migrant from Ethiopia gets prison time for taking 17-year-old boy at gunpoint
A 21-year-old immigrant from Ethiopia is bound for prison after pleading guilty Monday to kidnapping a Santa Fe teenager at gunpoint and then beating him.
The defendant, Daniel Tadege, agreed to a plea bargain that exposes him to between two and 10 years in prison and will almost certainly lead to his deportation.
His victim, who was 17 at the time of the attack, did not attend the hearing. But according to court records, he told police that Tadege showed up at his house on Galisteo Road on July 14, 2017, and forced him into a Jeep at gunpoint.
The teen told police he tried to run away, but Tadege and another man grabbed him and then Tadege pistolwhipped him.
According to a police affidavit for Tadege’s arrest, the victim told police the men threw him in the back of the Jeep driven by a third man. Then Tadege got in the back with him and pressed the gun into his side.
The victim told police he knew two of the three men, but said he didn’t know why they attacked him.
The affidavit went on to state that Tadege and a second man continued beating the teenager and “told him to bleed into a McDonald’s cup because if he bleeds on the floor they would shoot him.”
The driver of the vehicle, Reyes Mason-Muller, was 17 at the time of the kidnapping, the affidavit stated. A prosecutor said he did not know the identity of the third attacker.
They threw the victim from the Jeep on Mutt Nelson Road, then drove away. The teen ran to the nearest house and called 911.
When the victim arrived by ambulance at a hospital, one officer wrote in a report, the boy was bleeding profusely and had dried blood all over him.
Police arrested Tadege the next day during a traffic stop.
A grand jury indicted him on seven felonies, including kidnapping in the first degree. That crime carries a sentence of up to 18 years in prison. He also was charged with conspiracy to commit kidnapping, two counts of aggravated battery, conspiracy to commit aggravated battery, aggravated assault and conspiracy to commit aggravated assault.
Under the terms of his plea deal, the kidnapping charge was reduced to a second-degree felony carrying a maximum penalty of nine years in prison. Tadege pleaded guilty to that charge and one count of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. Prosecutors dropped the remaining charges.
Assistant District Attorney Blake Nichols said the plea agreement leaves it to state District Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer to sentence Tadege to no less than two but no more than 10 years in prison. Sommer sent Tadege to the Department of Corrections for a 60-day evaluation before imposing a sentence on him.
She said there is a 99 percent certainty that Tadege will be deported after his prison term.
Tadege will credited for approximately one year he has spent in jail awaiting trial.
Because each of the crimes he pleaded guilty to are classified as serious violent offenses, he must serve at least 85 percent of his sentence, rather than receiving day-for-day good time.
Asked what became of the other men
in the vehicle, Nichols said one was a minor, an apparent reference to Mason-Muller. Nichols said the minor was adjudicated in the juvenile system. Those records are not public.
Nichols said he didn’t know whether the third man in the vehicle was ever identified or prosecuted.
A man who answered the phone at the home where Mason-Muller had lived told The New Mexican that Mason-Muller was a foster child who had stayed with him for about a year before the kidnapping. The man, who asked that he not be identified for the safety of his other foster children, said state and court officials wouldn’t tell him the outcome of the juvenile proceeding.
But, the man said, he received a letter from Mason-Muller a few months ago in which he indicated that he was at the New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell. The man said he didn’t know if Mason-Muller had been ordered by a court to attend the military school.
As for Tadege, he had support in the courtroom from three Ethiopian women.
They said Tadege came to the United States when he was 19 to study mathematics and computers. But, they said, after his sister returned to their home country he was alone in Santa Fe with no family or knowledge of the culture.
The women, who declined to give their names, said they befriended Tadege. They said they thought he became involved with gang members, mistakenly thinking they would provide support similar to that of the tight-knit family he’d left behind in Africa.
Instead, they said, he became entangled in a world of violence and was made the scapegoat in the kidnapping.