Weatherford seizure could be kidnapping

A 33-year-old Weatherford man was arrested Sunday for a possible kidnapping infraction after rousing his ex-girlfriend out of bed sometime before 4 o’clock in the morning while she was sleeping with her new husband.
After waking her and the husband by knocking on their window at the Shady Acres Trailer Park south of Weatherford, suspect Bennie Darwin Bidwell Jr. allegedly took the woman to a residence in town on N. Third Street. Two Custer County sheriff’s deputies and two Weatherford policemen freed her there after calling the suspect’s cell phone and speaking with the woman, who apparently told them where she was being held.
Sheriff Kenneth Tidwell said Bidwell answered the phone himself and let an officer talk with the woman. She said she was alright, but Tidwell said the officer could tell from her voice that she was scared.
After going to the location on Third Street, they allegedly found a pellet pistol and a pellet rifle in the defendant’s possession but no real firearm.
Bidwell was arrested on three old warrants and the possibility of six new charges, including kidnapping, said Tidwell. Any new charges weren’t going to be filed until at least Monday afternoon.
It would be up to the District Attorney’s Office to decide what the new charges would be, but Tidwell said Bidwell was booked into jail on complaints of kidnapping; making obscene, harassing or threatening phone calls; threatening to perform an act of violence; possession of a controlled dangerous substance; possession of drug paraphernalia; and malicious injury or destruction of property. The old warrants were for not paying child support, contempt of court, and driving without a valid driver’s license.
The controlled dangerous substances allegedly found in the suspect’s possession at the time of his latest arrest were methamphetamine and marijuana. Tidwell said a crack pipe also was found.
He said about 4 a.m. Sunday his department was contacted by Weatherford police who said they had been called by a man named Mynor Chun-Lopez who reported that his wife might have been kidnapped by her former boyfriend from the Shady Acres Trailer Park. Since the location was outside the city limits, police were asking that sheriff’s officers respond.
Deputies Dan Brownfield and Walt Schumacher did. When they arrived, Lopez told them he and his wife were in bed at their residence when a man knocked on the window, wanting the wife/ex-girlfriend to talk to him.
Tidwell said Lopez had received a call earlier from Bidwell stating that he was going to shoot Lopez if he didn’t leave the house he and the caller’s ex-girlfriend were sharing. Thus, when he showed up at their window, the woman apparently was afraid her husband would be shot if she didn’t talk with him. Deputy Brownfield’s report indicated he was allegedly continuing to make threats against the woman’s new husband even then.
Consequently, to keep that from happening, she went outside to talk with him, then went with him – the report wasn’t clear whether it was willingly or not – to the residence on Third Street.
When officers arrived there after she evidently told them the address, Tidwell said Deputy Brownfield found the suspect standing in a covered area of a back porch or patio. He was arrested, apparently without resistance.
No one was hurt.
Incidentally, Deputy Brownfield is proving to be quite versatile. He also was the deputy who delivered a baby in the Custer County Jail on Aug. 18, 2015, and for which the county is now being sued because the mother wasn’t taken to a Clinton hospital so the baby could be born there. Apparently at the time Brownfield became involved in that incident, it was too late to transport her to the hospital.