Dolton police have identified two suspects wanted in connection with the abduction and murder of a Harvey man last week and the robbery and kidnapping of a second man who chewed through duct tape and escaped from the trunk of a vehicle when it had to stop for a train, police said.
Dolton Police Chief Robert Collins said Tuesday investigators obtained arrest warrants for two suspects based on surveillance video at automated teller machines. He declined to identify the suspects.
“We’ve been working with Chicago detectives and have (identified) the persons of interest that we’ve been looking for,” Collins said, adding that Dolton Police Cmdr. Darryl Hope has headed the “’round the clock” investigation.
The body of LaPrentis Cudjo, 28, was discovered Sept. 30 in a burning car in Chicago’s Roseland community, police said. He had been shot in the head and was not identified until this week.
Collins said that Cudjo and a second man, believing they had been communicating either via texting or on social media with a woman, arrived separately at a home in Dolton near 144th Street and University Avenue.
Cudjo arrived first, Collins said. Both expected to meet a woman, but they instead encountered two other men, who overpowered them, tied them up, robbed them and forced the men to provide account access information for their credit and debit cards before gagging them, Collins said.
Cudjo was put in the trunk of a silver-colored car, and the second man was placed in a dark-colored car’s trunk, Collins said.
“It was brazen,” Collins said. “They took two people out of the house and forced them into car trunks in broad daylight.”
Collins said the second man “chewed through the duct tape” binding his wrists and opened the trunk from the inside. He caught a break in Riverdale when a passing freight train forced both vehicles to stop on Indiana Avenue at 141st Street.
Sensing that the car was stopped, the man jumped from the trunk and ran to a convenience store, where he told the clerk to call police, Collins said. The two suspects abandoned that car.
Dennis Sullivan is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
A previous version of this story misidentified the police chief as John Franklin.