SANTA ANA – Kern County Sheriff’s Sgt. Steve Williams was driving along Highway 14 in the Mojave Desert in October 2012 when he spotted a woman standing on the side of the road screaming for help.

She was barefoot, and her hands were tied behind her back with zip ties, the sergeant testified in court on Monday.

The woman told Williams that she and her roommate had been kidnapped from Newport Beach, and that her roommate was still out in the desert in desperate need of medical attention.

Williams said he called for paramedics and then followed the woman to the crime scene. What he saw still sticks with him today, the sergeant said. The man had been brutally beaten and doused in bleach, Williams said. His penis had been zip tied and severed at the base.

“When you saw (the victim), was his penis gone?” asked Senior Deputy District Attorney Heather Brown.

“Completely,” Williams replied.

Testimony began in Orange County Superior Court on Monday in the case of a 38-year-old Fountain Valley man accused of teaming up with two friends to kidnap a marijuana dispensary owner in Newport Beach, whom they allegedly, mistakenly, believed had buried $1 million in the Mojave Desert.

Kyle Shirakawa Handley is facing felony counts of kidnapping for ransom, aggravated mayhem, and torture. He faces life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted.

His co-defendant, Hossein Nayeri, 39, made headlines last year when he escaped from the Orange County Jail and was captured in San Francisco eight days later. Nayeri is scheduled to face trial in the kidnapping case next year, as is a third co-defendant, Ryan Kevorkian, 38.

His voice strong and clear, the male victim took the stand on Monday and spoke matter-of-factly about his ordeal. The Register is not naming him because of the nature of the crime.

The man said he became friends with Handley through the marijuana business and spent two trips in Las Vegas with him, where Handley watched him spend thousands of dollars on gambling and posh hotel rooms.

After their last Las Vegas trip in May 2012, the man said he tried to contact Handley but never heard from him.

On the night of Oct. 2, 2012, the man said he had fallen asleep watching television in his Newport Beach home when he was suddenly awoken by a flashlight and a gun pointed at his face.

He said three men blindfolded and gagged him and tied his hands and feet with zip ties. They also gagged and tied up his roommate’s girlfriend, who had just moved in two days earlier.

The men then threw the pair into the back of a van and drove off, he said. Over about two hours, he said, they tortured him in the back of the van while demanding he tell them where he had stashed his money. The suspects had used a GPS tracker to learn he had taken trips to the desert, authorities said.

“They started kicking me,” he said. “They punched me. They Tazed me. They hit the bottom of my feet with a rubber hose. They used a torch and burned me. They kept asking me where I buried my million dollars. I told them I don’t have that much money.”

He said the van suddenly stopped and two men dragged him out and threw him on the ground. He said he was held down while one man cut off his penis. He was then splashed with bleach.

“I thought it was gasoline and they were going to burn me,” he said. “I thought, ‘Am I going to die? Am I going to live?'”

The man initially had no idea who would want to rob or kidnap him, but, prosecutors said, authorities got a break in the case because a neighbor had spotted a suspicious-looking truck near the home and wrote down the license-plate number.

Investigators learned that the truck was registered to Handley, who grew up in Fresno with Nayeri and Kevorkian and worked as a marijuana grower, authorities said.

The man’s roommate also testified on Monday, describing how she laid tied up and blindfolded on the ground and heard his screams as he was tortured.

“I was afraid we were going to die,” she said.

Before the culprits left, she said, one man tossed a knife into the bushes and told her if she could find it, she could cut herself free.

The woman said she pushed her blindfold up with her knees, scooted over to the bushes, found the knife and cut her feet free with her hands still tied behind her back.

She tried to free her roommate but she was unable to cut the zip ties because his hands were too swollen from the beatings, she said. She said she then walked barefoot on gravel to a highway, where several cars passed by before the sheriff’s deputy stopped.

Five years later, the woman said, she continues to struggle from the ordeal.

“It still haunts me,” she said.

The trial continues Tuesday, Dec. 19 in Orange County Superior Court.