Three men who kidnapped a ride-share driver after escaping from a Georgia jail were arrested Tuesday morning in Broward County, according to the FBI.
Naod Yohannes, 25; Stevenson Charles, 24; and Yusuf Minor, 31, broke out of a DeKalb County, Georgia, jail on Monday, according to officials.
Broward Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Veda Coleman Wright confirmed that the agency assisted Georgia and federal officials in apprehending the three men.
The Lyft driver told FBI agents that the men used a fake name to order the ride, put a rope around her neck from behind her, dragged her into the backseat and threatened to kill her, according to a court affidavit filed late Tuesday and obtained by The Associated Press.
They held her for about 10 hours.
Officers tracked the car as it traveled to South Florida with the aid of license plate readers, devices that can alert law enforcement to the locations of wanted vehicles. When they caught up with the car and tried to stop it, one of the inmates jumped out and ran but was arrested along with a second inmate, according to a court affidavit.
Investigators also learned that the men used the Lyft driver’s credit card for a short-term rental of a home in Miramar, where officers apprehended the third inmate and rescued the driver, court records state.
The men are being held in the Broward Main Jail pending extradition to Georgia, where they may now face federal kidnapping charges.
“We repaired the area that was compromised, and we’re looking at other areas that are similar to that to fortify them to make sure that they are not compromised in the same manner,” Atkins said at a Tuesday news conference.
DeKalb County Sheriff Melody Maddox described the jail as an “aging facility that’s deteriorating right before our eyes.” The jail is in Decatur, about 10 miles east of Atlanta.
The escape was discovered early Monday during a routine security check, authorities said.
A Lyft ride was arranged to transport the men from a girlfriend’s house in Georgia to an address in Florida, U.S. Marshal Thomas Brown said.
“As you can imagine, the Lyft driver is very traumatized by this,” Brown said.
Charles, 24, had been sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to multiple counts of kidnapping and bank robbery, a federal agent wrote in a Monday affidavit regarding the recent jail escape.
After being sentenced, the agent wrote, Charles was turned over to DeKalb County authorities on Dec. 5 to face a murder charge, details of which were not immediately available. A federal criminal complaint charging him with the escape does not list an attorney who could be contacted to comment on his behalf, and it wasn’t clear whether he has one at this early stage of the case.
In one of multiple cases involving Charles in South Florida, he is accused of meeting a man through the Grindr online dating application and then pulling a gun on him when they met in person at a Miami residence in 2022. Charles then drove the man to various Miami area banks, withdrawing money from the victim’s accounts, according to federal prosecutors.
The same month, he allegedly met a different man on Grindr and arranged to meet him in Dania Beach for sex. Once there, Charles pulled a gun on the man and told him that he hated gay people and believed they should be punished. Charles forced the victim to drive to a home in Aventura, where he robbed the victim and his roommates.
