BURLINGTON — A career criminal, who abducted a Good Samaritan at gunpoint in Windsor County following a truck crash on Interstate 89 and was later arrested by Berlin Police on multiple felonies, was sentenced Friday to 6 ½ years in federal prison for kidnapping the man.

Barry C. Perez, 39, formerly of Hartford, Conn., also learned he will be on supervised release for five years once he is discharged from federal prison.

Chief Federal Judge Christina Reiss also ordered Perez to make $44,626 in restitution for damage to a box truck, which officials said he had stolen and crashed just before the Good Samaritan stopped to help.

“You were out of your mind – self-induced,” Reiss told Perez about his drug use that day.

“Nothing has been deterring you.  We have to end your criminal history,” she stated.

“You could have killed somebody,” Reiss said.  She noted the case had a major impact on the kidnapped tractor trailer driver.

“This is a life-changing event for him,” the judge said for the 62-year-old Connecticut victim. 

Reiss noted the signed plea agreement called on the court to impose a prison term between 60 and 84 months.  The judge said she would go for the higher end and imposed 78 months.

Chief Federal Defender Michael Desautels agreed that “you can’t sugarcoat the crime.  He was not in his right mind.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul J. Van de Graaf said Perez was out of his mind, but not insane.  The defense had raised insanity as a possible defense, but the government disputed it, he said.

In the end the two sides struck a plea agreement.   The federal sentencing guidelines initially had proposed a penalty between 151 and 188 months, but the two sides negotiated it down to the 60-to-84-month range.  The government wanted the high end, and the defense asked for the low end.

“Perez’s history and characteristics also cry out for a substantial sentence.  Whatever the reasons, Perez is a career criminal,” Van de Graaf wrote in his sentencing memo.

The veteran prosecutor noted Perez had just gotten out of prison in New Hampshire a week before the Vermont crimes.  Van de Graaf wrote in court papers that Perez returned to drug use instead of reporting to his probation officer in New Hampshire.  He had been convicted Dec. 15, 2022 in New Hampshire on felony counts of bail jumping and sale of a controlled substance as a repeat offense, records show.

Perez has a lengthy criminal record, including in Vermont where he received concurrent federal prison sentences of 94 months each in February 2009 for conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine and conspiracy to possess firearms while trafficking drugs in 2003 and 2004 between Windsor County and Hartford, Conn.   He was given credit for three years in custody in New Hampshire for related crimes, the Rutland Herald reported.

Perez, who brought guns he obtained in Vermont to Hartford, Conn. to trade for drugs, was known to wear a bullet proof vest and carrying weapons while dealing in Vermont, the Herald said.

In the current case, Perez stole a box truck in Lebanon, N.H. in the early morning hours of Jan. 13, 2023 and drove to Vermont where he crashed into some rock in the I-89 median near exit 1 in Hartford.  A Good Samaritan truck driver stopped to offer assistance, but Perez pulled out a fake firearm that looked realistic, police said.  The gunman ordered the Good Samaritan to drive them north on I-89, police said.

Officials said Berlin Police reported they received a call about 5:10 a.m. seeking help at the Berlin Mall, where the tractor-trailer had stopped and the driver had slipped away while Perez had fallen asleep.

Senior Officer Peter Vosburgh, after meeting with the driver, used his cruiser-mounted public address system to order Perez out of the cab multiple times as Berlin and Northfield Police officers stood by.  Perez initially ignored the demands, police said. 

Berlin Police, with the aid of more officers from other Washington County law enforcement departments, later moved in with a tactical response because Perez was still believed to be armed with a real gun, according to Chief James Pontibriand.  The chief assisted Vosburgh putting the suspect into handcuffs, court records show.

Others assisting were Barre City, Montpelier and Capitol Police, along with the Washington County Sheriff’s Department.

A realistic-appearing 9-mm handgun was found in the vehicle, but turned out to be a Winchester Model 11 airsoft gun without the orange safety tip, police said.

He was eventually arraigned in Vermont Superior Court in Barre on charges of kidnapping, unlawful restraint, aggravated assault and reckless endangerment.  A state judge ordered him held without bail.

A federal grand jury later indicted Perez on charges of kidnapping, which carried a possible life sentence, and interstate transportation of a stolen motor vehicle.

Van de Graaf said Perez was involved in another troubling incident minutes before stealing the box truck.  

“For over a week he used copious amounts of a variety of drugs. But he has never described how he paid for them.  He claims to have ended up in a hotel in Lebanon, New Hampshire with a large quantity of drugs.  In his own descriptions of the events, he ignores that he was aroused in a stranger’s car in the parking lot of a Lebanon dialysis center,” the prosecutor wrote.

“When he woke up, Perez pulled out what appeared to be a handgun.  The owners of the car successfully got Perez out of the car and escaped the scene.  Perez then walked to a nearby Lebanon business where at about 4 a.m. on Jan. 13, 2023 he stole a box truck…” he said.

When Perez crashed the stolen truck, he left drugs in it, including 176 fentanyl/meth pills, 11 grams of meth and a small amount of fentanyl,” Van de Graaf wrote.

Perez was eventually arrested by Berlin Police and officers seized 18 grams of methamphetamine from the truck, while they found him carrying crack cocaine and psilocybin mushrooms.

“Perez held an illegal pharmacy,” Van de Graaf wrote. 

When Perez was initially indicted for the federal kidnapping and stolen vehicle charges, a prosecutor argued he needed to be detained as a danger to the community and a risk to flee.

In 2016 as he finished his federal sentence for drug and gun cases, Perez was sent to a halfway house in Boston.  He soon disappeared and was charged in January 2016 with violating his supervised release conditions, then-Assistant U.S. Attorney Lei Raymond Sun noted.  Perez was later sentenced to time served on March, 24, 2016 and had 55 months added to his supervised release time.

Perez had his supervision transferred to Boston, Mass. and he proceeded to violate the conditions at least two more times, records show.  The first time he got a 30-day sentence in December 2016, while for the second offense the judge imposed a 15-month prison term to run concurrent with a new conviction in Connecticut for conspiracy to commit a felony robbery, Sun said.  The robbery appeared to have been done while he was under federal supervision, he said.  

Perez has a “long history of flouting court-imposed conditions, absconding from custody, jumping bail, and committing additional crimes while under supervision,” Sun said