Three people were charged Thursday in connection with the kidnapping of a man who was kept in a St. Paul building, allegedly in a case tied to a Mexican drug cartel.
With information that the man was being held in a Payne Avenue building across the street from the police department’s Eastern District parking lot, SWAT officers broke through a door on Tuesday afternoon and found the 26-year-old.
He had a handcuff still attached to his right wrist, his hand was swollen and his bottom teeth were loose from being assaulted. He was shoeless, walked with difficulty and was in pain. He was taken to a hospital.
The case came to the attention of law enforcement when a person working with a Mexican drug trafficking organization received information from a contact in Mexico that someone had killed a person who owed money. The person then learned the man hadn’t been killed yet, but they were asked to help torture and kill him.
Richar Sanchez Mujica (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)
The contact in Mexico told the person to meet Richar Sanchez Mujica, 30, of Minneapolis, and bring chains and weights “to help take care of it,” according to the criminal complaints. The person contacted law enforcement on Tuesday morning and informed them what was happening.
A confidential source had told law enforcement in December that Mujica was involved in drug trafficking, and officers obtained a search warrant to track where he was through his cellphone location, the complaint said. A warrant was issued for Mujica’s arrest on Monday when he was charged in Hennepin County with possession of methamphetamine with intent to sell.
Law enforcement saw Mujica get into a minivan on Tuesday morning and they followed him to Minneapolis, where a man got in and Mujica drove to St. Paul with officers still following. Officers pulled the minivan over in the Phalen Boulevard area and arrested Mujica on warrants.
Job was collections
Mujica told police that the drugs he had in his pocket were methamphetamine and said the cartel doesn’t let him handle drugs, according to the complaints. He “owes his bosses in Mexico 10 pounds, so now does collections” and a handgun in the minivan was part of his “collection duties for the cartel,” the court documents continued.
Mujica said he received text messages for collections, gets sent to an address and has people there talk to the people he works for in Mexico.
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He agreed to show text messages to police, and when he opened his phone a navigation app showed a destination at Payne and Reaney avenues in St. Paul. He said he was sent to that address to make a collection for a drug debt and left there sometime that morning.
Officers told Mujica they believed he was currently holding someone against their will to collect a drug debt. Photos on Mujica’s phone showed a man who appeared to be chained or handcuffed, and the pictures had been sent to a Mexican phone number.
Mujica said “he didn’t know who grabbed the man in the basement — the man was already chained up” when he arrived, according to the complaints. He said he was only there to collect money.
“When asked (by police) if he thought that death or harm would come to the man in the basement,” he said, “Yeah, probably.”
Assault in building
SWAT officers breached an overhead door at the Payne Avenue building shortly before 2:30 p.m. Tuesday. Erling Soren Holdahl, 48, of White Bear Lake, and Kendra Sue Johnson, 39, of Minneapolis, along with the injured man, exited the building.
Erling Soren Holdahl (left) and Kendra Sue Johnson. (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)
The man who’d been held in the building said he has a pending drug case in Hennepin County and a friend told him he knew a lawyer who could help him. He gave him the address of a Payne Avenue building. A different friend gave the man a ride to the building between 6 and 8 p.m. on Monday. A woman greeted him at the door and told him to go down the hallway for the person waiting for him.
He walked down the hall and found a man pointing a rifle or shotgun at him. Another man hit him in the head with a heavy object from behind. A third man joined the others and repeatedly hit and kicked him, while he was unable to defend himself. He said the men wore masks during the assault. They took him to the basement, and handcuffed and tied him to a post.
The man said he was periodically hit and kicked over the next few hours, and blacked out. A woman, identified in the complaints as Johnson, came to him, made small talk and offered him water. She asked him about his family.
Johnson was going to look for a handcuff key and a man, identified in the complaint as Holdahl, came down the stairs and hit the man’s handcuffs, which broke them. Holdahl told the man to walk out with him and the SWAT team then entered the building.
The man told police “he had no idea who the people were who beat and kidnapped him,” said he hadn’t stolen from them and didn’t owe them money.
The Ramsey County Attorney’s Office charged Holdahl, Johnson and Mujica on Thursday with aiding and abetting kidnapping. Holdahl is also charged with drug possession.
Police said Thursday they continue to look for suspects involved in the kidnapping.
Brought by others, couple says
Investigators met with Holdahl, who said he has a contract for deed to purchase the Payne Avenue building, which was said to be an industrial warehouse in a previous real estate listing. He said he thought he’d been arrested because police were looking for guns that were bought or sold at his shop.
“Holdahl was told (by police) to think about a Mexican connection, and he then said, ‘For drugs,’” the complaint said. He said he’d been dealing with a guy from Mexico named Rana on the WhatsApp messaging app, and “found himself in the middle of something,” the complaints said.
He said Rana sends drugs to the Payne Avenue address, and Holdahl has been selling them “to get himself out of financial difficulty,” the complaints continued. He said he owes Rana $10,000, which Rana was using against him “and Holdahl found himself trapped.”
In a vehicle registered to Holdahl, police found bags with drugs that tested positive for meth — one with 41 grams and one with nearly 13 grams.
Johnson, who said she’s engaged to Holdahl, told police she wasn’t part of anything that led to the man being in the basement and didn’t know he was there until minutes before police arrived.
After police confronted Johnson about knowing the man was in the basement, she said masked men had been there the night before, they did roofing for Holdahl and were there to get materials from the shop.
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Holdahl said he wasn’t there when men brought the 26-year-old to his shop and his friend let the men in. He said he didn’t know if the man was going to be killed, “but he wanted to believe it was a show — that they were going to beat (the man) up” before letting him go.
Holdahl said he didn’t call the police “because Rana would kill him,” the complaints said. He said he believed the man owed money and was brought to his place “to send a message to Holdahl about the money Holdahl owes,” the complaints said.
Johnson has six prior felony convictions, including a federal conviction for conspiracy to distribute meth. She was released from federal prison in March.
Holdahl has at least 13 prior felony convictions, including for burglary and drug cases.
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