Republished from the Newport Dispatch
Following a jury trial last week, a man was found guilty of kidnapping and assaulting a confidential informant working with the Vermont Drug Task Force in Lowell.
David Vaz, 32, of Springfield, Mass., was found guilty of attempted aggravated assault, kidnapping, and unlawful restraint charges.
According to court records, the confidential informant told police in November of 2017 he was assaulted by several men, including Vaz.
Vaz is said to have kicked and punched him in the head.
At one point during the kidnapping, the informant had a knife held to his throat while he was tied up, cut on his cheek by a razor blade, hit over the head by a bottle, and burned by a heated-up fork.
According to court records, the victim’s ex-girlfriend told his attackers that he was working with police, even taking photos of cell phone conversations with police and sending them to several of the suspects in the attack.
The victim eventually managed to escape and ran to the neighbor’s house and began to bang on the door.
Several of the suspects chased him around the house, but he got away and went to the police for help.
“I commend the jury for reaching a just verdict in this case,” Vermont State’s Attorney Jennifer Barrett said. “It sends the message that violence associated with drug dealing will not be tolerated in Orleans County.
Vax will be sentenced at a future date.
Categories: Drugs and Crime
Here we go again, coming down so judgmentally on one of our tourists from downcountry. Clearly we Vermonters need to come out of our cultural bubble and realize that in other parts of our own Country, people of different backgrounds and ethnicities settle disputes and express their anger toward others in ways that may seem foreign to us. Becoming familiar and comfortable with the different ways people having a disagreement interact is just part of celebrating diversity and acknowledging our common humanity!
Are you serious??
(not serious) but regarding such issues, if we dont laugh, all we can do is cry…
What is wrong with you?
Round up the usual suspects
movin on from southern vermont……..
Convictions are one thing. How about punishment? Are the state’s therapists doing the social work thing on convicts like this man? Shouldn’t we just turn him loose to pay for past crimes? There have been very few real messages sent to deter this kind of behavior. It costs a fortune to warehouse dangerous criminals too.
“It costs a fortune to warehouse dangerous criminals too.” It’s worth every penny to both keep the individual perp off the street AND to send a message to all the other such scum from Southern
New England/NYC that their thug-culture will not be tolerated here.
I’m sure he’ll be getting off easy. Drug users are incarcerated more often then the pushers.
Illegal use of drugs, not Covid, is the real world wide pandemic.