Two men have been arrested after three women and a teen girl were abducted and held captive in a storage container in Pennsylvania following the witnessing of a shooting, officials say.
Davaun Carlon Jackson, 29, of East Stroudsburg and Isaiah Rogers-Keeney, 19, of Middletown were arrested by state troopers at a Walmart in Mount Pocono in Pennsylvania, at around 10:44 a.m. on Tuesday, according to law enforcement officials.
Jackson has been charged with kidnapping, rape and terroristic threats, among a string of other charges, while Rogers-Keeney is charged as an accomplice.
Their whereabouts came from a member of the public who claimed that a Ford SUV was traveling north on the freeway Route 33 with two of the victims inside.
Police said they caught up with the vehicle in the parking lot of a Walmart Supercenter. They found Rogers-Keeney and one of the victims inside the vehicle, and saw Jackson leaving the Walmart with a second victim.
“Troopers, along with the Pocono Mountain Regional, located the suspects’ vehicle at the Walmart in Monroe County. They waited and set up a perimeter, and when the suspects exited the Walmart, they were taken into custody,” Trooper Anthony Petroski of the Pennsylvania State Police told Local 21 News.
“Ultimately, it was discovered four females were kidnapped by two different individuals. They were bound, they were sexually assaulted, and they were threatened.”
Monroe County district attorney Mike Mancuso told WFMZ that the victims ranged from 17 to 21 years of age. Two of them had witnessed a shooting in the city of Wilkes-Barre, 6abc reported, citing court records.
After the shooting, they had been ordered into the Ford SUV, and once they were inside, saw that two other women were also in the vehicle.
The investigators believe that the men then took the women on Monday to a property in Smithfield Township owned by Jackson.
The four were then reportedly placed in a shipping container, with three bound with ropes and restrained.
Police say Jackson had threatened to kill the victims, having “multiple weapons,” and that he sexually assaulted two of them.
“There was a car chase, there were kidnappings, transportation to places of isolation, threats of murder, of mayhem and sexual assaults,” Mancuso told WFMZ. “There was one minor there. The minor was 17 years old. The other ones were, the age range was, I believe 18 to 21.”
Jackson and Rogers-Keeney allegedly took the females to another property that Jackson also owns on Tuesday, where he let one of the victims have her phone back. She then called her mother, according to the district attorney.
“It was the mother of one of the victims that called the police,” Mancuso said.
The district attorney said that officials had been following Jackson before this incident occurred.
“There has been an investigation that has involved him over the course of the last several months,” Mancuso said.
He added that all of the victims, including the victim of the apparent shooting in Wilkes-Barre, are going to survive, and Monroe County is offering the four victims who were kidnapped access to mental health services.
An attorney listed for Rogers-Keeney told Newswatch 16, “The only statement I will make right now is that I have spoken with my client and that he maintains his innocence in this case.”
