Four Family Members Charged for Kidnapping 6-Year-Old to Teach Him About "Stranger Danger"

This is awful.

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Complex Original

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Police in Missouri have charged four members of a 6-year-old boy's family for staging a kidnapping—at gunpoint—to teach him about talking to strangers. 

According to the Washington Post, the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office said that the boy's aunt, 38-year-old Denise Kroutil, propositioned a co-worker, Nathan Wynn Firoved, earlier this week about the sadistic scheme: 


Gas station worker Nathan Wynn Firoved, 23, allegedly put the plan into action. At that point, no one in the family, save for the boy’s aunt, even knew Firoved’s last name.


According to police, Firoved waited for the 6-year old to get off the bus and lured him into his truck after school on Feb. 2. Once the boy was in the truck, he began threatening him.


Firoved said the boy would never see his mommy again and he would be nailed to the wall of a shed., the sheriff’s office said. When the boy started to cry, the sheriff’s office said, Firoved pulled out a handgun and threatened him.


He bound the boy’s feet and hands with plastic bags and covered his face with a jacket so that he couldn’t see. Firoved drove around for some time before taking the boy, face covered, to the basement of the boy’s house where his aunt waited.


For some four hours, the family terrorized him. Throughout the incident, the boy’s mother and grandmother remained in contact with Firoved by cellphone.

In addition, Kroutil reportedly pulled down the boy's pants and threatened that we would be sold as a sex slave. Kroutil was reportedly infuriated when the boy didn't make a strong enough attempt to resist her. What's perhaps more infuriating is that the boy's mother, Elizabeth Hupp, 25, and grandmother, 58-year-old Rose Brewer, signed off on all of this.

According to CNN, a police statement said that the boy remained bound in the basement until he was freed and told to go upstairs. That's where he received a lecture about "stranger danger." On Wednesday, he told officials at his school what happened, triggering an investigation. 

Kroutil, Brewer, and Firoved have been charged with felonious restraint. Hupp was charged with felony kidnapping and abuse, as well as neglect of  a child. 

[via Washington Post and CNN]

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