Drug Dealer’s Abduction, Release Puzzles Police

An admitted cocaine dealer who was abducted at gunpoint from his Yorba Linda business on Sunday was released unharmed Monday, but police are raising questions about his curious story.

Police said they are still treating Juan Escobar’s abduction as a kidnaping which might be related to his guilty plea in a cocaine case in New York.

But his disappearance, and mysterious reappearance, has sparked questions, said Lt. Bill Lentini of the Brea Police Department, which covers Yorba Linda.

For instance, police noted the time lag, 5 1/2 hours, from Escobar’s 11 a.m. release in the Mission Hills area of Los Angeles until he called police at 4:30 p.m.

“That wasn’t lost on us,” Lentini said.

The unusual incident began at about 2 p.m. Sunday, when seven people leaped out of a white Toyota van at Escobar’s car-detailing business in Yorba Linda, Escobar told police.

Several captors, flashing chrome-plated guns, gagged and tied two of Escobar’s employees, then shoved Escobar into the van and fled, police were told. The two employees reportedly freed themselves and called police. No suspects are in custody.

Escobar, 29, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy in a major cocaine trafficking operation, said John Dowd, a Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman in New York. He is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 6 in U.S. District Court in New York.