‘36 hours of terror’: Two sentenced to decades in prison for teen’s abduction from Bustleton Olive Garden

Two men convicted in the kidnapping for ransom of a teenager snatched from a Northeast Philadelphia parking lot as part of a plot to recover money owed to Mexican drug traffickers were sentenced to decades in federal prison Tuesday.

Describing their crime as “absolutely heinous and reprehensible,” U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle III sentenced Eduardo Castelan-Prado, 39, of Leonia, N.J., and his codefendant, Jose Reyes Ochoa, 32, of Moreno Valley, Calif., to 40 years behind bars.

But despite seeking leniency, citing their own children, who would be left fatherless while they were in prison, neither man expressed remorse for his actions.

“I just want to say that I would like you to be a little conscious of what you’re doing,” Ochoa told the judge. “I’ve got two kids who are waiting for daddy in the house.”

Castelan-Prado chose to say nothing at all when given the opportunity to address the court.

“I’m quite OK,” he said through a Spanish interpreter.

The irony of the men’s request was not lost on Bartle, who noted Ochoa played a central role in a kidnapping plot that resulted in a frantic 2021 search to locate the missing teen, a rescue effort at a North Jersey apartment, and a shootout with agents that resulted in the death of a third coconspirator, Rodrigo Rodriguez-Gonzalez.

“It’s very fortunate that this young man is alive to tell the tale,” the judge said.

Peter J. Scuderi, attorney for Ochoa, attempted to paint the victim as no innocent and his family as at least partially to blame for his kidnapping — a characterization that drew strong rebukes in court.

“I’m not saying my client should be given any award for the kidnapping,” the attorney said, adding later: “But the [victim’s father was] obviously dealing with a Mexican cartel, which obviously undercuts” his calls for justice.

Bartle responded: “Are you saying the children of drug dealers aren’t subject to protection under the kidnapping laws?”

Testifying at his kidnappers’ trial this summer, the teenage victim said he was counting his tips in his car after wrapping up a shift at the Olive Garden on Roosevelt Boulevard in June 2021, when Castelan-Prado, Ochoa, and Rodriguez-Gonzalez grabbed him at gunpoint and forced him into a waiting car.

The men blindfolded him, demanded he unlock his phone so they could find his parents’ phone numbers, and drove him two hours north to New Jersey — where they transferred him to a van and forced him to sleep in a cardboard box overnight.

Eventually, the teen said, he was transferred to the Leonia apartment where Castelan-Prado lived with his own 15-year-old son.

And all the while, the abductors placed several ransom calls to the teen’s parents demanding that his father, Waldis Santana, pay them the money that he owed.

At one point, while speaking to the teen’s mother, Castelan-Prado insisted he would give her some time to come up with the money before they would be forced to move on to “Plan B.” The teenager would later testify that he heard his captors on the phone with a man in Mexico who ordered them to start cutting off his fingers if his parents didn’t pay up.

Santana reported his son’s kidnapping to Philadelphia police, prompting a frantic search to locate the boy before it was too late.

Investigators quickly located the teen’s car, abandoned in the parking lot of a grocery store near where he was abducted, and traced the cell signals from the ransom phone calls to the apartment complex in Leonia, N.J., where he was being held.

As agents burst into the unit on June 16, Rodriguez-Gonzalez opened fire, prompting a shootout in which he was killed. Police found the teen under his captor’s collapsed body before locating Castelan-Prado and Ochoa elsewhere in the complex.

Evidence recovered at the scene later showed that the three captors had surveilled the teen and his family for weeks, shooting video outside their house and even placing a tracker on the car of the boy’s father.

“The seriousness of this offense cannot be understated,” Assistant U.S. Attorney’s Justin Oshana and Katherine Shulman said in court filings leading up to Tuesday’s sentencings. “The defendant[s] played an active and vital role in the stalking and eventual kidnapping of a minor at the direction of a drug trafficking organization.

“The victim endured 36 hours of terror that only came to an end because of the actions of law enforcement.”