FBI Accidentally Kills Victim of 'Movie-Style' Kidnapping

Shots fired early Thursday inside Houston home
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 26, 2018 10:12 AM CST
FBI Accidentally Kills Victim of 'Movie-Style' Kidnapping
Jimmy Sanchez.   (Conroe PD)

A "movie-style" kidnapping came to a grim ending as an FBI agent accidentally shot and killed the bound victim in Texas. "We do this job to help people and it doesn't always go our way," Conroe Police Chief Philip Dupuis said Thursday, per the Houston Chronicle. A day earlier, Ulises Villadares was taken from his Conroe home by armed men. Villadares' 12-year-old son was tied up by the men but eventually escaped and called police; the boy said he overheard the kidnappers says Villadares' brother, who lives at the residence but wasn't home, owed them $8,000, per KPRC. A phone call to that brother demanding a $20,000 ransom was then traced to a Best Western in Houston, where Jimmy Sanchez, 38, and Nicholas Cunningham, 42, were arrested. Cunningham, married to a relative of Villadares' brother, admitted to having a girlfriend who was holding Villadares, court documents show.

It was at her home, with two children present, that a bound Villadares was accidentally shot around 3:45am Thursday, reports the Dallas Morning News. Sophia Perez Heath, 35, told authorities Cunningham had brought the man to her house Wednesday and asked her to watch him, per KPRC. Heath is charged with aggravated kidnapping, while Cunningham and Sanchez face that as well as aggravated robbery charges. "We've got the bad guys," but "it's still a tragedy," Montgomery County District Attorney Brett Ligon tells the Chronicle, noting felony murder charges might also be filed. The FBI agent who fired the fatal shot is now on administrative leave. Meanwhile, Villadares' brother tells authorities he received a car from his female relative in exchange for money he gave her for house repairs, per KPRC. He says he didn't owe anyone money. (More kidnapping stories.)

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