Police arrest 'onion torturer' who used vegetable to extract information from drug dealers



Police have arrested a man who had a rather unusual method of extracting information from his victims - stuffing their heads in sacks of onions.

Erick Mejia is accused of working for a gang who impersonated police officers so they could kidnap and rob drug traffickers along the East Coast.

In 2008, the gang are accused of setting up a fake police road block, kidnapping a drug dealer and stuffing his head in a sack of onions to extract the whereabouts of his narcotics stash.

Accused: Erick Meja is accused of being a member of a gang that kidnapped drug traffickers and stuffed their heads in bags filled with onions to simulate suffocation

The New York Daily News reported NYPD Detective Therone Eugene of the Drug Enforcement Administration as saying: 'The crew placed a bag of onions over the head of one of the male victims to induce him to reveal the location of narcotics.

Unusual: It is unknown how the gang came up with the bizarre method of extracting information from their victims

'The bag filled with cut-up onions caused the victim to experience a form of asphyxiation.'

The gang pretended to arrest the drug dealer in a car-stop by using fake badges and a car fitted with police lights.

He was then driven to a caravan and tied up along with a woman and child.



The gang returned to Queens with a $35,000 haul, court papers said.

Although they often used traditional methods of beatings, squeezing testicles with pliers and mock drownings, the cut onion method also proved successful.

The paper reported the onion trick was used during a home invasion in Georgia that yielded 77 pounds of cocaine and $100,000 in cash.



The gang, led by Franklin De Vargas, was allegedly responsible for more than 100 robberies in several states.

A spokesman for Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch said Mejia was being held on a murder charge and would be transported to New York for arraignment soon.

