EMERY COUNTY, Utah — The victim left a note in a gas station bathroom that led police to arrest a guy from Michigan last Thursday in central Utah for allegedly kidnapping her.
Richard Lyneal Phillips, 38, is charged with several misdemeanors, including kidnapping, which is a second-degree felony, and breaking a protection order by giving false information to a police officer.
Someone found a note in a gas station bathroom on June 20 and told the Utah Highway Patrol that someone might have been kidnapped. Records show that the note had the victim’s phone number and a message from her saying that she was being held against her will.
The police used a phone to find Phillips and the female victim in Green River, which is in Emery County. According to the papers, Phillips gave the police the wrong name and had a “marijuana cigarette” in the center dashboard.
A deputy directed a taser at the suspect during a “brief standoff” before he was handcuffed and taken into custody. According to the records, the victim looked “very emotional and scared at this time.”
Phillips and the woman who was harmed were both questioned by the State Bureau of Investigation. She is said to have told them she had been held against her will and beaten several times. In their report, the police said that she had marks on her body that supported the claims of attack.
Investigators were able to confirm that Phillips had a protective order against the victim. Also, they said they found several Ohio warrants for Phillips’ arrest for theft, drug possession, attack, and strangulation. Records show that there was also a warrant out of Michigan for drug possession and choking.
Police say the woman told them Phillips came up to her in Michigan and told her to drive him to Colorado.
They had to drive him to several states, where she tried to call the police at the hotels they stayed at because she knew he was trying to get away from them. According to the probable cause, the victim said Phillips would drive off with all of her things in the car and come back after the cops left. The woman then put the note in the bathroom, which helped the cops find them.
Records show that she told investigators that she had called the police 32 times since November because Phillips had come to her house and abused her and her children. She said that the cops could only find him twice.
