SALT LAKE CITY (KSL.com) – A woman who met a man in Salt Lake City to potentially buy a pair of shoes ended up being kidnapped at gunpoint, police say.
On Wednesday, a 24-year-old woman agreed on social media to meet a man near 255 S. West Temple to buy him some shoes. The woman said she recognized the man as someone she knew several years ago.
When Najee Eugene Christopher, 26, pulled up to the designated meeting place, the woman got inside her vehicle to look at the shoes, according to a police booking affidavit.
“Rather than showing the shoes, Najee started to leave,” the affidavit reads.
The woman asked Christopher to go back and let her out. Instead, he “pulled a small black handgun from inside his jacket and pointed it at her. Najee kept pointing the gun at (the woman) and driving slowly,” according to the affidavit.
According to police, Christopher then attempted to pull the woman’s leggings down. As they were driving, the woman texted her mother saying she was “being held in a white Jeep by a man with a gun” but also that her cell phone was about to die.
After driving for about 30 minutes, she said they pulled into a parking lot near 3400 S. Main. When he stopped, the woman got out of her vehicle and ran.
“As she was fleeing, she heard what she thought was a gunshot. Najee left the area at high speed in the Jeep,” the affidavit states.
Police later reported finding a bullet hole in the window of a nearby business and a bullet inside the building, which was closed at the time. Detectives also used company surveillance video to obtain Christopher’s vehicle license plate.
The license plate was traced to a registered owner in West Valley City where a SWAT team was called to serve a search warrant, according to the affidavit. Officers then arrested Christopher at his girlfriend’s home in South Salt Lake. The weapon believed to have been used in the abduction was later recovered from the roof of a business, the affidavit states.
He was incarcerated in the Salt Lake County Jail for investigation into aggravated kidnapping, firearm discharge, possession of a firearm by a restricted person, obstruction of justice, sexual assault, possession of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia.
