3 Charged in Attempt to Kill Woman Over Burglary

A Cal State Northridge student has been charged with kidnaping the woman she suspected of burglarizing her campus apartment and attempting to have her killed before two sheriff’s deputies intervened, authorities said.

Christi Daniels, 19, and her boyfriend, Kenneth Ceasar, 23, face charges of kidnaping, attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder following the Jan. 5 abduction of 18-year-old Czarian Ramsey of San Pedro, authorities said.

An 18-year-old suspect, who was a juvenile at the time of the abduction, also faces similar charges. Los Angeles County prosecutors intend to ask a Juvenile Court judge to order the suspect tried as an adult.

Ramsey told police that she was taken to a remote location, where Ceasar held a gun to her head while Daniels told her to “breathe your last breath.”

Plead Not Guilty

All three suspects, who are from south Los Angeles, have pleaded not guilty. Deputy Dist. Atty. Harold S. Lynn said the trial date is expected to be set during a hearing at the San Fernando Courthouse this week.

Investigators said the foiled kidnaping involves a falling out between two longtime friends, one of whom took the law into her own hands.

Daniels lost something in the burglary that was “valuable enough monetarily or sentimentally to make her do what she did. She went out on her own,” said CSUN Police Lt. Mark Hissong.

Authorities said the case began Jan. 2 when Daniels, a CSUN freshman, reported that $18,000 in clothing, jewelry and other items had been taken during a burglary at her apartment on Zelzah Avenue. Hissong said there was a forced entry to the apartment and much of Daniels’ belongings were stolen.

Hissong said Ramsey, who does not attend CSUN, was described by a student as the person seen leaving Daniels’ apartment with a pile of clothing the day of the burglary.

Old Acquaintances

Authorities said Daniels and Ramsey had known each other for eight years, including one year in which Ramsey lived with Daniels’ family. Investigators said they do not know what motive Ramsey would have had to break into Daniels’ apartment, and Ramsey has denied involvement in the burglary.

On Jan. 5, Daniels located Ramsey, who was staying with a friend at an apartment on Willis Avenue in Sherman Oaks. Daniels alerted campus police but Hissong said investigators did not have enough evidence to arrest Ramsey or search the Sherman Oaks apartment for the stolen property.

“That didn’t seem to me to be a valid approach,” Hissong said. “We had just gotten to the preliminary stage of the investigation and wanted to talk with the district attorney’s office about what we had.”

Daniels, however, apparently couldn’t wait for the legal system to follow its course, authorities said. At 10 p.m. Jan. 5, she went to the Sherman Oaks apartment and asked Ramsey to come outside to talk about the burglary, Deputy Gerald Johnson said.

Ramsey got into a car with Daniels and soon Ceasar and the juvenile suspect also got in, Johnson said. Ramsey was taken against her will to a desolate park-and-ride lot off San Fernando Road near the Antelope Valley Freeway in Newhall, he said.

Ramsey was pulled out of the car, placed on the ground and questioned by her three captors at gunpoint, he said.

Ramsey told investigators that she repeatedly denied involvement in the burglary. She said she believed that she was about to be shot when her captors saw a sheriff’s patrol car approaching and threw the gun into the car.

Car break-ins and thefts are frequently reported at the parking lot and it is frequently patrolled by deputies. Johnson said that on Jan. 5, when deputies saw three people standing in the rain with a woman lying in the mud, they knew that something was wrong and put on their emergency lights.

“It may very well be that the arrival of the deputies stopped it all,” Lynn said.

The suspects were arrested and the gun was recovered from the car. Since then, Daniels and Ceasar have been jailed in lieu of $100,000 bail each while the third suspect is being held at the Sylmar Juvenile Hall.

Meantime, the CSUN burglary remains unsolved and Ramsey is still a suspect, Hissong said. He declined to talk about the investigation but said none of the property taken from Daniels’ apartment has been recovered.