Texas police have charged a man with kidnapping and assault after shocking new footage appears to show him dragging a woman into a home against her will.
Harris County police arrested 22-year-old Jose Armando Carcamo-Perdomo last week, local outlet ABC 7 reports. Prosecutors claim Carcamo held a woman in a Houston-area home for nearly a week against her will.
A nearby neighbor’s surveillance camera captured footage shows a man in a pink shirt picking up the woman and carrying her into a home as she kicks her feet in an attempt to escape. Police say that man is Carcamo.
“She tried to leave, but this defendant carried her back inside the residence without her consent,” a Harris County judge said. “He tied her up and then sexually assaulted her.”
Prosecutors say the woman was trapped in a room inside the house for at least five days and did not have food or water.
The sheriff’s office believes the kidnapping may have been part of a larger human smuggling and sex trafficking ring, Click 2 Houston reports. Carcamo is from Honduras and entered the U.S. illegally, the Department of Homeland Security said Sunday.
Carcamo maintains he is innocent, his attorney told Click 2 Houston.
“Our client, Mr. Jose Carcamo, is shocked by the serious allegations brought forth against him and firmly maintains his complete innocence,” the attorney said. “He fully expects that the evidence will ultimately clear his name.”
“We remind the public that under the United States Constitution, every individual is entitled to the presumption of innocence, the right to due process, and a fair trial,” the attorney continued. “We expect law enforcement, the State of Texas, and the judicial system to honor these fundamental rights without prejudice or assumption.”
The neighbor who captured the surveillance footage says he called 911 after releasing what happened.
“As soon as I drove out of the fence at work, I called 911 to report a possible child abduction,” the neighbor told ABC 7.
When police arrived at the home, they found the woman locked inside a closet. Harris County Lt. John Klafka said that Carcamo claimed he didn’t know anything about the woman, according to Click 2 Houston.
“He knew there was someone in the house, but he claimed to have never seen her or said it was a woman that lived there but didn’t know her, didn’t see her, has never had any interactions with her,” Klafka said.
The woman told police she was a masseuse in New York when she was offered a position in Houston that paid more. She was then “given transportation” to the area, but Klafka said Carcamo didn’t drive her.
When the woman arrived, she had her Chinese passport taken from her, Klafka said. She was then tied up and sexually assaulted by the suspect. After her escape attempt, she was locked in a closet with a board screwed into it to keep it shut.
Investigators believe there may be both more suspects and victims involved.
“He obviously is not the one that drove her from New York,” Klafka said. “So there’s that, he’s not the person that drove her from the first location in Houston. And, we know there’s other people involved.”
“This is a very traumatic event. You know, you’re in a foreign country. You were brought from one giant city to another that’s halfway across the country south,” he added, said. “And she has no friends, no family. Nobody is here for her. So we’ve got to do everything we can to ensure that she can trust us to do our jobs and find the rest of the people that are involved in this.”
Klafka said the woman did not know Carcamo before the alleged kidnapping.
The neighbor told ABC 7 he’s “angry” with himself for not picking up on the alleged kidnapping sooner. He hopes his report makes a “bigger difference with other people maybe, other victims.”
