HURRICANE, W.Va. — A couple who had been living in a Hurricane motel are now housed in the Western Regional Jail after a crime spree in Putnam County. Michael Gary Smith, 29, and Kasey Kincaid,33, face charges of kidnapping, assault, and robbery after an incident Wednesday night at the Hurricane Sheetz.
The pair approached the unidentified victim who was pumping gas and offered him drugs and sexual favors for a ride to Charleston according to Hurricane Police Detective Larry Angell. When the victim refused, Angell said the two forced him to drive them at gunpoint.
“He was kidnapped at Sheetz in Hurricane and from there he was held at gunpoint and taken to Rock Branch where he was forced to make a couple of different ATM withdrawals,” said Angell. “They robbed him of money from ATMs, robbed him of personal cash out of his wallet and kept him for a while making a lot of threats.”
After leaving the bank at Rock Branch, Smith got behind the wheel, but instead of continuing on to Charleston he took the wrong ramp and wound up headed back toward Huntington on I-64. It turned out, they decided to stop off at a restaurant at the same Hurricane exit, only a few hundred yards from Sheetz to get something to eat.
“One of the suspects was hungry and decided he was going to stop at Taco Bell,” said Angell. “At that point the victim was actually able to escape while they were in the drive-thru. He was able to get out of the car and call the police.”
The two suspects had ordered up $60 worth of food and despite the victim’s flight, waited around on their food enabling the Hurricane Police to show up in time to catch them.
“Yeah, they did,” Angell said. “There’s probably some logic why, as alarming as you would think it would have been to them, they stayed for the food.”
Police took both into custody in the Taco Bell parking lot. Angell said they have the pair along with the victim on security video in several locations backing up the victim’s story. The pair was also suspected in an armed robbery at the America’s Inn in Hurricane, where they had been staying recently, only a few hours earlier. Angell said additional charges connected to that crime are likely coming.
“The society we live in, you’re not exempt from any kind of crime anywhere. It doesn’t matter if you’re in Hurricane, Charleston, Huntington, or Detroit,” said Angell. “It’s the same players, same people, same crimes, and same issues.”
The incident was likely drug related according to investigators, although police did not indicate any drugs were found in the two suspects’ possession at the time of their arrest. Both are lodged in the Western Regional Jail without bail.