Long Island cops making a routine traffic stop discovered a man being held hostage in his own pickup truck Saturday — with one of his assailants hiding a machete in his shorts.
Officers said the victim had met his three alleged kidnappers at a motel in Westbury but aren’t sure how he was lured there.
“He did go there not knowing what was going to occur,” a law-enforcement source said.
The victim was held at knifepoint and forced to give the trio his keys, phone and money, police said.
The suspects then forced the victim into his vehicle and were apparently driving him to an ATM to steal more dough, Nassau County Police said.
The scheme unraveled when officers pulled over the Ford F150 at 6:45 p.m. after it rolled through a stop sign and officers noticed that one of the passengers, a 48-year-old man, looked distressed.
“His face was like ‘Help me. Help me.’ He looked very distraught,” a police source said.
After ordering everyone out of the vehicle, one of the alleged assailants, Tylor Salmeron, began to run and threw a large machete hidden in his shorts onto the ground. Police were able to catch him, along with the alleged driver, Yonathan Hernandez, and a 16-year-old passenger whose name was not released.
“They pretty much held him prisoner,” a police source told The Post of the suspects. “They were trying to get money out of him. They had weapons, so who knows what they were thinking.”
The suspects were charged with raps including kidnapping in the second degree and robbery in the first degree, as well as criminal possession of a weapon in the fourth degree and conspiracy in the fourth degree.
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