UPDATE: $20,000 reward being offered for information leading to additional arrests. NEW DETAILS HERE
Authorities confirmed Saturday they have arrested a man in South Carolina in connection with the abduction of a woman from a Center City parking garage last week.
Local authorities worked with ATF agents to trace the man, identified as 31-year-old Khayree Gay of Philadelphia, to a South Carolina motel and arrested him for his role in the kidnapping and beating of a 53-year-old woman, police told NBC10.
Gay is charged with federal robbery and kidnapping.
Gay, along with two other abductors, grabbed the woman from a parking garage at 8th and Chestnut streets last Saturday, forced her into a cargo van, zip-tied her wrists, shackled her ankles and covered her head with a hood, according to police.
Surveillance video released by an area store showed the woman, who had just left her job at National Watch & Diamond on Jeweler's Row, walking to the garage.
Once the suspects grabbed her and put her in the van, they demanded keys to the jewelry store and codes to the safe, investigators said. Unable to provide either, the victim told police she was then tortured and shocked with a Taser before the men dumped her — still bound — at Montlawn Cemetery at Hook Road near Lindbergh Boulevard in Delaware County.
Her ordeal was not yet over, however.
The captors returned to the cemetery, forced her back into the van and then drove her around using her ATM card to make four withdrawals before dumping her back at the cemetery, where she was able to eventually remove the hood, make her way to Hook Road and flag down a driver who called 911.
She was treated at Penn Presbyterian Hospital for bruises, contusions and a concussion, according to police. She was home recovering earlier in the week.
According to an affidavit, Gay surveyed National Watch and even spoke to the victim, taking her business card, the day before the abduction. Police also believe Gay disposed of the burgundy van shortly after the abduction.
