By DaniRae Renno, pennlive.com (TNS)
A woman who was kidnapped, drugged and being trafficked stabbed her captor and fled on the Pennsylvania Turnpike on Wednesday, according to an affidavit of probable cause filed by police.
Police charged Edgar Jesus Espinoza Gamboa, 27, of Denver, Colorado, with human trafficking, simple assault and terroristic threats. Police said they also charged Jose Antonio Hernandez Guiterrez, 30, with the same charges, but charging documents were not immediately available. His hometown is unknown.
A trooper monitoring tunnel traffic near the Blue Mountain tunnel traffic crossover saw a vehicle barrel out of the tunnel erratically and swerve into the median in front of him about 5:40 p.m. Wednesday near mile marker 199 on I-76 in Lurgan Township.
The trooper found the passenger bleeding profusely from a neck wound and the driver said “La chica stab, run across road.”
The trooper provided first aid to the wounded man, while a second trooper summoned the woman back and used her cellphone to translate a conversation to figure out what had happened.
The state police gave the following account in an affidavit of probable cause filed against the suspects:
The woman, who is Canadian, was picked up by Espinoza Gamboa and Hernandez Guiterrez at her uncle’s house, which she said was in Missouri. They said her boyfriend in Mexico asked the two men to pick her up and transport her back to Canada for $2,000. Her age was not included in court documents.
But during the trip, she started to suspect the men were drugging her because she felt sick and thought they were blowing some type of dust on her to keep her asleep because she felt a substance on her face when she woke up.
As they kept driving, the men said they were going to force her to have sex for money, sell her to someone for $1,000, and then sexually assault her, tie her up and kill her or throw her in the mountains to freeze and die. As they threatened her, they pulled electrical stun guns.
The woman, fearing for her life, started stabbing Espinoza Gamboa, who was in the passenger seat, in the left side of his neck and back. It’s unclear what she stabbed him with.
Hernandez Guitterez, who was driving, stopped the vehicle and the woman escaped, running across the eastbound travel lanes, over an embankment and into the woods.
Espinoza Gamboa told the trooper he had “papers” for the woman and Hernandez Guitterez got documents from inside the vehicle. The document appeared to be fake.
Espinoza Gamboa was flown via medical helicopter to Penn State Holy Spirit Trauma Unit.
The woman told police she was “kidnapped,” “threatened to be raped,” “drugged,” and “being trafficked to Canada.”
Hernandez Guitterez and the woman were taken to state police headquarters. Hernandez Guitterez said he and Espinoza Gamboa were cousins. He lied to police, changing his story and providing inconsistent information. Eventually, he told police he picked the woman up from Kansas on Tuesday and Espinoza Gamboa devised a plan to take her to New York.
Espinoza Gamboa told police he didn’t know the woman and refused to answer further questions.
A search of the vehicle, allowed by Hernandez Guitterez, found two stun guns, a pack of zip ties, binoculars, clothing, cellphones and $1,020 in U.S. currency. Police also said they found a ledger on a notepack contained information relative to human trafficking, but did not elaborate.
The consent search was stopped pending the completion of a search warrant for human smuggling and trafficking. A search of Hernandez Guitterez found about $3,212 on him.
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