Investigators say three men broke into a Belle Glade grandmother's home and held her at gunpoint before stealing a safe with $70,000 inside.
Hannah PhillipsPalm Beach Post
WEST PALM BEACH — 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. Inside the home, 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 from Belle Glade 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 a waiting 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. This month, a federal judge sentenced three of them — Dillon Renee Polanco, Anthony Lamar and Rahsaan Robinson — to decades in prison.
Each faced several life sentences for their roles in the scheme: Polanco, the ringleader who oversaw the operation from states away, and Lamar and Robinson, two of three young men Polanco recruited to steal from King after his relationship with the man soured.
Polanco, Lamar and Robinson pleaded guilty to a combination of kidnapping, robbery and firearms charges this month, forgoing their right to a trial by jury but avoiding a lifetime behind bars. U.S. District Judge William Dimitrouleas sentenced Polanco to almost 11 years in prison, Lamar to almost 29 and Robinson to more than 18.
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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 Lamar and Darwin Salgado, both in their 20s, to return with him to South Florida in December to rob King.
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 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 the 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.
Investigators said that upon his release, Salgado traveled to Oregon to meet withPolanco and enlisted two others to retrieve the money and firearms hidden inside the Mitsubishi rental car and return them to Polanco.
Palm Beach County prosecutors 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 Dimitrouleas asking that Salgado be imprisoned for life.
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"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 2023, all of Salgados' codefendants have since pleaded guilty. The last to do so, a man named Geovanni Vazquez, faced up to 10 years in prison for helping retrieve the $70,000 from the rented Mitsubishi.
Dimitrouleas sentenced him to time served instead, making him the only of five defendants to avoid prison.
Hannah Phillips is a journalist covering public safety and criminal justice at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her athphillips@pbpost.com.
