More than 100 pages of documents made public by a California state court detail how a teenage boy escaped his captors and what officers seized with search warrants.
The search warrants on two Tracy residences revealed that the boy was being driven around in leg chains in a white SUV before he found a key and was able to escape. The boy secretly unlocked the chains, jumped from the car at a stop light and fled.
The boy told officers he didn't know what city he was in when he made his getaway. He ended up at a Tracy health club where he sought help.
In addition, the boy told detectives that he ran from a Sacramento group home in May 2007. While walking along a highway, he was kidnapped by two strangers and put into a car — and then apparently taken to Tracy.
His alleged kidnappers were male and may have been Spanish speakers, according to what he told detectives.
A partial list of what officers seized with the search warrants included cell phones, blue tape, suspected marijuana, a camcorder, a knife, a disposable camera, a belt with a buckle and an aluminum bat.
The teenage boy who allegedly was held captive and tortured in a Tracy home for more than a year was frequently beaten, denied food for days at a time and forced to stay for long periods inside a wood-burning fireplace, according to a narrative accompanying the search warrants.
When found, the warrant said, the boy appeared much younger than his 16 years due to malnourishment and his body was covered with soot, sores and new and old scars. The boy, according to the warrant request, told officers he had been regularly hit on the head with a baseball bat and was once cut with a knife and strangled with a belt until he passed out.
One one occasion, he was asleep and chained to the fireplace when a person purposefully ignited the hearth, resulting in significant burns to his left arm.