WEST PALM BEACH — A group of men are facing multiple life sentences in federal prison for their roles in a kidnapping and home invasion that took place in western Palm Beach County three years ago.
Prosecutors say a man lured friends Chi'Kevious King and Marvin McGrew to an AirBnB in The Acreage in December 2020. Armed with an AR-15, the man and two accomplices ordered King and McGrew onto the ground, bound their arms and legs and tossed them into the trunk and back seat of King's car.
King said he then gave his kidnappers what they had traveled from Ohio and California to get: directions to his grandmother's home in Belle Glade. There, the men found King's mother and grandmother, as well as a safe containing $70,000.
Prosecutors say the three men stole the safe and fled in King's Dodge Challenger. They later abandoned the car on the side of a road, leaving King and McGrew still bound inside while their kidnappers escaped in an awaiting Honda Accord.
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A lengthy interstate investigation involving the FBI and two informants prompted more than 20 federal felony charges against the accused kidnappers and their suspected co-conspirators. A superseding indictment filed last month added another defendant, Dillon Polanco, to the mix.
His arrest report details a soured relationship with King and a plot to make money at his expense, roping in younger men to help and condemning them to years in prison along the way.
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According to court records, Polanco drove from Ohio to West Palm Beach to sell King marijuana months before the kidnappings. Federal investigators said King paid Polanco using money from the safe in his grandmother's home.
One informant told investigators that a dispute over drugs caused Polanco and King's relationship to deteriorate. The informant said Polanco recruited Darwin Salgado and Anthony Lamar, both in their 20s, to return with him to South Florida in December to rob King.
According to his arrest report, Polanco paid Salgado $10,000 to cover the airfare, AirBnB and firearms necessary to carry out their plan. Then Polanco arranged for a third man, 22-year-old Rahsaan Robinson, to take his place in the kidnapping.
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King's arrival at the AirBnB on Dec. 14, 2020, was expected. His friend McGrew's was not. According to the FBI, Salgado called Polanco while King and McGrew watched TV in the living room and asked whether to proceed with the robbery. Polanco said yes.
The men did as they were told, subduing McGrew and King and driving to King's grandmother's home in Belle Glade soon afterward. Salgado knocked on the front door and forced his way past King's grandmother when she opened it. He and Robinson carried King into the house and left McGrew tied up in the trunk of the car.
"Nothing could have prepared me for the events of that night," King's 76-year-old grandmother wrote later. "Hearing the words, 'Ma'am, I will shoot you,' caused me to be frozen in fear."
She began to pray.
King broke free from his restraints and fought with Salgado and Robinson, who he said pistol-whipped him in the eye and choked him unconscious. He woke up in the back of the Dodge, watching as the three men fled with the locked safe in a Honda Accord.
Later, a passerby who saw McGrew crawl out of the Dodge's trunk helped cut his and King's restraints and called 911. A Palm Beach County judge signed off on a warrant for their assailants' arrest on charges of kidnapping, home invasion robbery with a firearm and armed burglary the next day.
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Investigators believe the men used a saw to open the safe in a Motel 6 in Broward County and hid the $70,000 inside the door of a rented Mitsubishi. The U.S. Marshals Service arrested Salgado and Lamar at a hotel in Georgia on Dec. 16, 2020 — two days after the incident — but did not find the $70,000.
The men were housed temporarily in the Palm Beach County Jail on charges of kidnapping, home invasion robbery with a firearm and armed burglary. However, the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office did not pursue the charges, citing insufficient evidence.
Both men were released from jail without restriction.
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Investigators said that upon his release, Salgado traveled to Oregon to meet with Polanco and enlisted two others to retrieve the money and firearms hidden inside the Mitsubishi rental car and return them to Polanco.
The Palm Beach County State Attorney's Office pressed new, weightier charges against Salgado and Lamar — including kidnapping with a firearm and aggravated battery with a firearm — a month and two weeks after declining to file the first charges. Federal authorities took over the case from them in March 2022.
Faced with three possible life sentences in federal prison, Salgado pleaded guilty the following September. King's grandmother wrote a letter to U.S. District Judge William P. Dimitrouleas asking that Salgado be imprisoned for life.
"The memories of this situation have left me feeling vulnerable, worried, confused — a prisoner in that place I so comfortably called home," she wrote.
Dimitrouleas sentenced him to 19 years instead, accounting for his cooperation with investigators.
Taken into federal custody between July and October of this year, all of Saldagos' codefendants have pleaded not guilty and are poised, for now, to fight the charges at trial.
Lamar and Robinson face three life sentences each and Polanco faces two. Geovanni Vazquez, who investigators believe helped retrieve the $70,000 from the Mitsubishi, could spend up to 10 years in prison, court records show.
Hannah Phillips is a journalist covering public safety and criminal justice at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her athphillips@pbpost.com.
