More charges have been filed in the kidnapping and torture of a woman who worked along Philadelphia’s Jewelers’ Row.
Salahudin Shaheed, 34, Khayree Gay, 31, and Basil Buie, 23, all of Philadelphia, were charged Thursday by superseding indictment with conspiracy, kidnapping and attempted Hobbs Act robbery. The superseding indictment adds the conspiracy charge to the previous indictment against Gay and also adds defendants Shaheed and Buie.
Shaheed recruited Gay and Buie to rob the National Watch and Diamond Exchange on the 100 block of South 8th Street in Philadelphia last April, according to the indictment. The three men allegedly conducted surveillance of the store and its employees from a parking lot on the 700 block of Chestnut Street.
On April 3 Shaheed identified a 54-year-old jewelry store clerk as their target but postponed the robbery when he spotted the woman entering a parking garage at 8th and Chestnut streets with other people, according to officials. The next day the men returned to the parking garage, grabbed the woman, threw her into a van, placed a hood over her head and zip-tied her hands, investigators said.
The trio took $800 in cash and her ring and demanded the woman's debit card pin number and codes to the alarm and safe at National Watch & Diamond Exchange, according to investigators.
But the victim didn't know the alarm and safe information, and when she couldn't supply the information, the suspects turned even more violent, agents said.
For the next few hours, they drove the victim around as she was beaten and repeatedly stunned with a Taser, officials said. They told her, agents said, "This is the day you're going to die."
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She was eventually thrown from the van at Mount Lawn Cemetery in Darby, Pennsylvania. A concussion and broken ribs were the physical scars she suffered as well as mental distress.
All three men were later arrested.
