By Erika Hernandez
Dec 24, 2024, 7:34 PM EST
Local authorities reported that a member of the Tren de Aragua gang in Aurora, Colorado, dressed as a woman, wearing a long, voluminous wig and a woman’s knit captried last week to evade police officers who were searching for the perpetrators of a brutal kidnapping.
Officials found Venezuelan gang member Niefred Serpa Acosta, 20, while he was pretending to be a woman, Aurora City Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky told the New York Post.
Police were searching The Edge at Lowry apartment complex for suspects in the kidnapping and torture of two residents in the Denver suburb on the morning of December 17, when they found the suspect in disguise.
Serpa Acosta allegedly carried out the kidnapping and brutal torture of a migrant couple who lived at The Edge apartment complex in Aurora earlier this month.
A group of immigrant gang members kidnapped the couple from their home before forcing them into another apartment in the complex, where they tied them up, pistol-whipped them and beat them, cops said.
Some of the gang members also returned to the couple’s apartment to rob it.
The victims were freed after lying to their captors and promising not to call the police, who received a 911 call from the couple around 2:30 a.m. on December 17.
When police searched the apartment complex and began questioning residents, they found Serpa Acosta wearing the wig.
Police are now seeking to press charges against 16 gang members believed to have carried out the kidnapping.according to Denver news station KDVR.
Serpa Acosta first fled from police after a viral video circulated in August showing heavily armed gang members breaking into an apartment at The Edge at Lowry complex in Aurora.
Just a few months earlier, in May, Serpa Acosta was detained by ICE and admitted that he was a member of the notorious Venezuelan gang and that he had tattoos to show his affiliation, sources previously told the New York Post.
It is unclear why he was released from federal custody.
Serpa Acosta is currently in ICE custody in Denver. He first entered the United States at the border in El Paso, Texas, where he was quickly deported to Mexico before re-entering the country at an unknown time, according to the newspaper’s sources.
Keep reading:
– Two members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua are arrested in Tennessee.
– New York Police warn that the Aragua Train is recruiting migrant minors.
–National Security warns that the Aragua Train already has operations in 16 states