Three Arkansas men — including an administrator at a state technical college, who has since been fired — have been accused of kidnapping an 18-year-old man and forcing him to play Russian roulette.
Sherwood Police said they launched the investigation when the young victim and his mother came to the police station and reported that the 18-year-old had been kidnapped at gunpoint on the morning of September 21, KATV reported.
According to an affidavit, the victim was helping his girlfriend by bringing her car back to her home when Jackson Homan, 23, “‘jerked’ the door open” and tried to pull him from the car. Homan eventually got him out of the car and forced him to walk to the back of the home with a gun to his back. There, he was forced into another vehicle, where Robert Ellerd, 54, was in the back seat and Homan’s 19-year-old brother Charles was in the front passenger seat.
Both of the other men were armed, he said. The trio drove him to a home in North Little Rock and took him into the basement, where they forced him to remove his shoes and socks and tied him up with an extension cord. Then they forced him to play Russian roulette, telling him to break up with his girlfriend and leave Little Rock or they would kill him and his parents.
Homan and Ellerd by kc wildmoon
The men took the victim’s phone and forced him to smash it, then threw the broken parts into a pond before dumping him at North Little Rock High School.
Ellerd, who at the time was the director of financial aid at the University of Arkansas-Pulaski Technical College, was the fiance of the victim’s girlfriend’s mother.
The victim’s girlfriend told police she had witnessed the kidnapping but was too afraid to report it. She also said the three suspects were friends of her deceased brother. The girlfriend told police that her mother was inside the home at the time of the kidnapping but “did not try to intervene.” The mother told police she was “unaware” of what was going on at the time and said that Ellerd “followed” the Homans as they kidnapped the victim.
Jackson Homan’s girlfriend was also there at the time and “appeared to keep trying to distract” the girlfriend, she said.
Police said they reviewed surveillance footage from the school and identified the Homans.
Police took a SWAT team and a search warrant to the home where the victim had been held and found a shotgun, a pistol, two white cords, and .38 caliber ammunition.
The three men are charged with kidnapping, aggravated robbery, and terroristic threatening. They’re being held on $50,000 bonds each.
Ellerd was fired from his job after his arrest.
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[Featured image: Jackson Homan, Charles Homan, and Robert Ellerd/Pulaski County Sheriff’s Office]
