Details of Big Lake abduction emerge

WASILLA — Court documents reveal new details about the case against a pair of Anchorage residents accused of kidnapping a Big Lake couple last week.

According to a sworn statement Alaska State Troopers Investigator David M. Bower submitted for inclusion in the cases against Arthur Gray, 24, and Benjamin Lega, 19, the case began at 1:53 a.m., Feb. 3 with a Wasilla Police Department traffic stop on a 1990 Ford Explorer with faulty headlights.

The driver told officers he and his girlfriend had been kidnapped and that she was handcuffed in the back seat of the Explorer.

When troopers talked to the girlfriend, she said she’d been asleep in her Big Lake home when her dog barked at 11:30 p.m.

“When she opened her eyes, Gray and Lega were standing in front of her pointing guns at her,” Bower writes.

They asked for money. She said she didn’t have any. They ransacked the house and took a pistol, a rifle, prescription medications, $120 cash and “a portion of a marijuana grow that she had,” according to Bowers.

As the house was being ransacked, the woman’s boyfriend, who lives next door, showed up and tried to enter her place but the door was locked. So, he told troopers, he was going to pull out his key but the door opened and Gray and Lega were pointing guns at him.

“After being bound with tape, Lega and Gray demanded his debit card. When (the boyfriend) told them it was at his house, they cut the tape off and Lega escorted him at gunpoint to his house next door.”

In addition to the card, Lega took a flat screen television and a small amount of cash from his wallet.

Gray and Lega smashed the woman’s cell phone and house phone. Lega took the boyfriend to a Big Lake ATM, but the machine was out of order so they went back to the woman’s house.

They loaded the couple in the woman’s Explorer, handcuffing the woman first and smashing the man’s cell phone in the driveway before ordering him to drive toward Anchorage.

They stopped for gas and Lega tried the man’s ATM card again. Troopers say this time he was successful.

The Wasilla cop who stopped the Explorer took the boyfriend out of the car and he told them what was going on.

According to Bower’s affidavit, Lega identified himself as Christian Laga and, when he didn’t come up in state databases, told officers he’d just moved to Alaska from Samoa a few days ago.

“It wasn’t until he was booked into Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility that his real identity was discovered,” Bower writes.

Troopers got video of Lega entering the Big Lake Tesoro and Mile 49 Tesoro. They also found footprints matching the shoes Gray and Lega were wearing leading up to the woman’s house as well as two broken phones inside the house and one broken phone in the driveway.

The boyfriend told troopers that “everything he did was in fear of being shot by Gray and Lega. He said that during the entire ordeal he was afraid that he would be shot if he didn’t comply with their demands.”

Lega and Gray were jailed at the Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility. Jail records Thursday afternoon showed both were still incarcerated. Both were ordered held on $500,000 bail and each will need to find someone to watch him before he can be released.

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.