Mother of suspect in kidnapping of woman, 4 teens arrested
SUBLETTE COUNTY, Wyo. -- A Utah woman was arrested Saturday hours after her adult son and his father were charged with luring a woman and her four teenage daughters to a Utah house and tying them up, reports CBS affiliate KUTV.
MaryAnn Harrison had $10,000 cash with her when she was arrested for a probation violation in Sublette County, Wyoming, where her son Dereck "DJ" Harrison, 22, and his father Flint Harrison, 51, were arrested Saturday after a five-day manhunt. It is not clear what MaryAnn Harrison's relation to Flint Harrison is.
The men were are accused of tying up and unidentified woman and her daughters with zip ties. When the elder Harrison hit the woman with a baseball bat, the teens began to break their ties and try to escape, according to charging documents. In the struggle that followed, one girl slapped away a shotgun pointed at her throat and another grabbed the bat and hit the son before they escaped, police said.
MaryAnn Harrison, 45, withdrew the $10,000 from a bank as the pair were en-route to Wyoming, according to Centerville Police Lt. Von Steenblick.
Investigators checked with Utah Probation and Parole and found MaryAnn Harrison had probation conditions that prohibited her from leaving Utah. She was taken into custody in Wyoming and booked into the Sublette County Jail, Steenblick said.
"(MaryAnn Harrison) told us they brought that cash in case they needed to hire an attorney or in case they needed to make bail for DJ, they knew the warrants were no bail warrants," Steenblick told KUTV.
Police say they will be looking into the possibility that MaryAnn Harrison went to Wyoming with the money in an attempt to help her son escape authorities.
"Our concern was if DJ had a phone, that he could set up a rendezvous point and they could drive him out of there and use that cash to get him out of the area," Steenblick said.
Shortly after police began looking for the two men on Wednesday, MaryAnn Harrison told KUTV in an interview that she thought her son Dereck Harrison was pressured into the crime by Flint Harrison. She said the pair was likely on a "meth binge."
In the interview, she encouraged her son to run away from Flint Harrison.
All three suspects remain in the Sublette County Jail awaiting extradition to Utah, according to Centerville Police.