Abducted N.Y. college students were 'terrorized repeatedly'

Jon Hand and Gary Craig | Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Two New York college students who were kidnapped over the weekend were beaten with fists and clubs and "terrorized repeatedly" amid demands for money, credit cards and bank PIN numbers.

Anik Okeke Ewo and Nicholas Kollias, both 21 and seniors at the University of Rochester, were last seen at 2 a.m. Saturday morning. They were held for 40 hours until they were rescued Sunday night by a Rochester police SWAT team.

Kollias was shot in the leg with a .22-caliber rifle, according to a criminal complaint released as six young adults accused in the kidnapping were being arraigned.

Lydell Strickland, 26, and Dennis Perez, 23, of Rochester, N.Y., Leah Gigliotti, 20, of Gates, N.Y., and Samantha Hughes, 19, of Perinton, N.Y., were arraigned Tuesday morning on four counts each of first-degree kidnapping in connection with the case. They were accused of forcibly abducting and restraining the students.

The four were charged under two theories of the same crime for each defendant; one alleges they caused physical harm during the kidnapping; the other that they terrorized the victims during the kidnapping.

"The defendants did forcibly abduct the victims, Nicholas Kollias and Ani Okeke Ewo and did forcibly restrain them for over 40 hours," reads the complaint. "The victims were repeatedly assaulted with fists, clubs and other objects, including victim Kollias being shot with a .22 caliber rifle. The victims were terrorized repeatedly over the time they were restrained and forced to surrender money, credit cards and personal identification numbers. The victims were forcibly held at gunpoint until rescued by police."

Ruth Lora and Inalia Rolldan, both 19 of Rochester, were arraigned on two counts each of second-degree kidnapping. They were accused in a second criminal complaint of helping guard the two college students, one of whom was kept tied up and bloodied in the northeast Rochester home where they'd been taken.

Court papers say neither of the University of Rochester students "had any familiarity with the area in which they were being held, and had no method or opportunity to contact anyone outside the residence."

The father of one of the defendants said he believes his daughter got caught up in something of which she wasn’t aware.

“I don’t know of any connection between them,” Valentin Lora said of his daughter, Ruth and the other defendants. “She told my wife that she didn’t know the guys. She called and told my wife that she doesn’t know anything about the situation, she was mistakenly in the place but she got caught doing something she didn’t know about.”

His daughter is a second-year business student with “good grades” at Finger Lakes Community College, he said. She lives in Canandaigua, N.Y., where she also works at a Dunkin’ Donuts store.

She was at her parents' home Friday.

“Ruth came from school on Friday to wash clothes over here. The last thing she told my wife was that she was going to do something outside and she didn’t come back again since Friday in the afternoon.

“We didn’t see her for three days, I thought maybe Ruth had to go back to school. All her clothes are still here in the laundry, waiting for her. We were waiting for her yesterday and then this morning we got the call an hour before court.”

The six defendants entered not guilty pleas Tuesday.

City Court Judge Melchor Castro ordered Strickland, Perez, Gigliotti and Hughes held without bail, and set bail at $50,000 for Lora and Rolldan. Castro also issued orders of protection barring the defendants from having any contact with the two students for six months.

Strickland, a two-time parole violator, has served state prison time on a conviction of attempted criminal possession of a weapon, records show. He was arrested in 2011 on weapons possession and cocaine possession charges, which were resolved with a plea to attempted weapons possession. He was sentenced to two years for the crime, to be followed by two years of parole.

Records also show a 2011 incident in which he was accused of shooting a city man in the leg.

Released in 2013, Strickland returned to prison on a parole violation, corrections officials say. After another release to parole, he again violated parole and was sent back to state prison. He was freed this April and completed his parole supervision in October.

Assistant District Attorney Matthew Schwartz said the allegations against the six individuals will be presented to a grand jury this week.

Schwartz declined to speak about whether the students and alleged abductors knew each other and just what investigative steps led to their rescue, other than to say it was "good police work."

Both Kollias and Ewo were taken to the hospital Sunday with non-life threatening injuries.

Kollias is still in the hospital, Schwartz said.

"He's on the road to recovery," he said.

Ewo has been released from the hospital, Schwartz said.

Kollias and Ewo are business majors.

According to New York State Penal Law, "abduct means to restrain a person with intent to prevent that person's liberation either by secreting or holding him or her in a place where he or she is not likely to be found, or by using or threatening to use deadly physical force."

Second-degree kidnapping, a felony, carries a potential sentence of 5 to 25 years in prison; first-degree kidnapping carries a sentence of 15 to 25 years and a maximum term of life imprisonment.

Police did not elaborate on the details in the criminal complaints Tuesday. They also said they would not release mugshots of the accused persons so as not to bias witnesses who might be asked to identify the accused in lineups.

Strickland, Perez and Gigliotta gave videotaped statements to police after they were taken into custody, according to the criminal complaint. Lora and Rolldan also "made voluntary statements after waiving their Miranda rights."

The events leading to the rescue of the students is still largely a mystery.

The students were seen Saturday about 2 a.m. near the University of Rochester River Campus, and were reported missing under "suspicious circumstances" about 6:30 p.m. that same day. The SWAT team rescued them from a house in northeast Rochester about four miles from campus.

At a news conference after Ewo and Kollias were rescued Sunday night, Rochester Police Chief Michael Ciminelli said the two men had been "forcibly abducted" and that four suspects were taken into custody.

After the proceeding, the University of Rochester issued a statement.

"The University of Rochester is grateful to the Rochester Police Department for the sustained efforts that led to the swift arrests and charges in the abduction of our two students. Our focus as a university is on our two students as they recover from their ordeal. We continue to believe this was an isolated incident and wish to stress that our campus is safe."

Police continued to search the home where the students were held Tuesday for evidence, rifling through trash in a stand-alone garage.

"We wanted to come back and make sure we could corroborate information," said Scott Peters, Rochester Police deputy chief of operations. "We want to make sure we didn't miss any evidence.

"The amount of information that's coming to us is, quite frankly, overwhelming," he said.

Follow Jon Hand on Twitter: @jonhand1. Follow Gary Craig on Twitter: @gcraig1