Germantown kidnapper claims he only meant to rob victim

PRESSED BY a federal judge to explain why he kidnapped a 22-year-old stranger in Germantown last year, then drove her bound in his car trunk to Maryland, Delvin Barnes, speaking publicly for the first time about the abduction yesterday, claimed it was an "act of desperation."

Barnes, 38, a Philadelphia native who most recently had been living in Virginia, told U.S. District Judge J. Curtis Joyner: "I ran out of money, so I was waiting on the corner" of a street in Germantown. "I grabbed the wrong person actually," he said, without explaining what he meant.

"I needed more money to go back to Virginia to see my daughter in Virginia before I faced law enforcement" there, he said.

Barnes contended he was just looking "to rob" someone. When he spotted Carlesha Freeland-Gaither - a nursing assistant who was walking to her home that night - another "car was coming down the street at the time," so he decided to abduct her and put her in his car in case cops came upon the intended robbery, he claimed.

"Regardless, the robbery turned into other things," Barnes, a short, thin man, dressed in a green prison jumpsuit, said in a soft voice, as he sat at the defense table with his two attorneys.

Barnes pleaded guilty yesterday to the one count of kidnapping he was federally indicted on last year in the outrageous abduction that was captured on video, and which had triggered a multistate manhunt.

Freeland-Gaither was rescued Nov. 5 - three days after her abduction - when federal agents found her, hysterical and shaken, in Barnes' car in a parking lot in Jessup, Md. They arrested Barnes, who was also at his car.

As part of a plea agreement reached between prosecutors and the defense, Barnes is to be sentenced to 35 years in federal prison, followed by five years of supervised release.

A sentencing hearing was scheduled for Jan. 6.

Defendants don't always speak at length at plea hearings, but Joyner asked Barnes why he kidnapped the woman and why he held her against her will.

Barnes, at one point, also said "I can't make sense out of it." He said he was on drugs, but that was "not an excuse for my actions."

About a month before the Germantown kidnapping, Barnes abducted a 16-year-old girl in Richmond, Va., around Oct. 1, and drove her to his trailer home in Charles City, Va.

Capt. Jayson Crawley, of the Charles City County Sheriff's Office, has said that Barnes raped the teen, poured bleach and gasoline on her, threatened to kill her and dug a hole in the back of his property to bury her before she escaped Oct. 3.

As part of yesterday's plea hearing, Barnes also admitted to his crimes in Virginia. As part of his plea agreement, he will not face a separate prosecution in Virginia.

According to court documents in the Germantown kidnapping case, at about 9:40 p.m. Nov. 2, Barnes "violently grabbed" Freeland-Gaither, whom he did not know, on Coulter Street near Greene in Germantown.

He "dragged her down the street, and forced her into his car," the plea memorandum says. A video captured the abduction and showed the victim struggling to get away.

Freeland-Gaither deliberately dropped her phone at the abduction scene. She fought back and shattered one of the windows in Barnes' Ford Taurus as it sped away, the plea memo says. She even struck Barnes in the head with a hammer she found in his car, according to prosecutors.

Barnes threatened that if she did not stop fighting, he would kill her. He drove her to Maryland while she was bound by her wrists, locked in the cold trunk of his car, according to prosecutors.

After the hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeanine Linehan declined comment.

Barnes' attorneys, Elizabeth Toplin, assistant chief of the Trial Unit in the federal defender's office, and Nina C. Spizer, chief of the Trial Unit, said Barnes has one daughter, who lives with her mother in Virginia.

Barnes was born in Philadelphia and lived his early years here before his family moved to rural Virginia, an uncle of his has said.

He attended the fall 1994 and spring 1995 semesters at John Tyler Community College in Chester, Va.

Barnes eventually returned to Philly and married. In 2005, he violated a protection-from-abuse order by his then-estranged wife, and snuck into her Northeast Philly home and savagely attacked her and her parents.

A year later, Barnes was convicted of aggravated assault and related offenses. He served eight years of a four-to-eight year sentence and was released from state prison on Nov. 30, 2013, according to state prison records.

He then moved back to Virginia, where he eventually landed a job at the Community Pride Supermarket in Richmond, police in Virginia have said.

According to his plea memo, Barnes returned again to Philly last year after police in Virginia were looking for him in the 16-year-old's abduction.