An Orange County grand jury has indicted three young men for first degree felonies in connection with the May kidnapping of local lawyer Jim Bearden from his Bridge City home during a burglary.
District Attorney John Kimbrough said the men are facing up to life in prison. The three are 20-year-old German Borjas-Benitz, 17-year-old Henry Rivera-Antunez and 17-year-old Erik Pagoada-Bustillo.
The Orange County Sheriff’s Office has reported the three are undocumented and from Honduras. They have been in the Orange County Jail in lieu of a $1 million bond on each since they were arrested three days after the May 8 kidnapping.
Bearden was sleeping late at his house that morning after his wife, a teacher, and his children went to school. The family lived in the Dishon Plantation subdivision off East Roundbunch Road.
Men broke into his house looking for things to steal. After finding Bearden in a bedroom, they pointed a gun at his head, threatened him with a baseball bat and at one point tied his hands and feet together with electrical cords.
After discovering he didn’t have much cash at the house, they drove him to a Port Arthur bank and forced him to empty his bank account. While in the bank, he had one of the kidnapper’s cell phone tuned to Face Time so they could see him.
As he had the phone, he saw the phone’s owner had the phone bill. Bearden texted his own phone the information. After he dropped off the cash at a designated spot, he contacted OnStar, which notified Port Arthur police.
The Orange County Sheriff’s Office was able to track down suspects through the phone bill information Bearden had saved.
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