UVA kidnappers get four years
The Washington Post is reporting that the two UVA engineering students charged last November with kidnapping a fellow Chinese national will spend the next four years in prison. Guan Yu Lu and Bai Chuan Shu, both 19 at the time of the crime, were arrested for kidnapping a man in Tyson's Corner and binding him in a motel with duct tape while they went on clothing shopping spree with the man's credit card and demanded $500,000 in ransom from his family.
The Post reports that although both of the perpetrators were seen as academic "stars" in their hometowns in China–- with Shu (shown at right) a prestigious UVA Rodman fellow–- they plotted the crime to shatter the boredom of their lives in Charlottesville. Their full sentences are 20 years, but the judge suspended most of the time.
2 comments
Now they're gonna get really bored.
Wait a second.
They kidnapped a guy and bound him up with duct tape, likely an experience that he will have nightmares about for the rest of his life, and then went on a shopping spree with his credit card.
And they got four years?
I could go out and sell some crack and get more time than that. I guess we should just be glad they got more time than the guy who stabbed a firefighter to death on the Corner.
Does anyone have any knowledge of whether a credit card company would forgive the debt in a situation like this?