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Jury convicts man in hotel abduction: He and accomplice burst into man's Lehigh County room, took him to ATM.
Nov 21, 2008 (The Morning Call - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
A jury found a man guilty Thursday of abducting an Ohio businessman from a Lehigh County motel, robbing him at gunpoint, then taking him to an ATM to withdraw money.
The 12-member jury deliberated for about 30 minutes before convicting Nelson James Simmons, 34, no known address, of kidnapping, robbery, robbery of a motor vehicle, and criminal conspiracy to commit robbery. Each charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
Simmons, scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 14 by Judge Maria L. Dantos, was charged nearly two years after the robbery when he was shot and his DNA matched evidence found in the victim's rental car.
Simmons' accomplice in the robbery, 31-year-old Alexander Lopez, also with no known address, pleaded guilty Monday to two counts of criminal conspiracy.
The prosecutor, Chief Deputy District Attorney Lisa R. Cipoletti, said Simmons claimed at trial that the victim, Jon Michael Tyner, was a drug user who owed Simmons money and that's why the two met. That was apparently an attempt to explain why his DNA was found in Tyner's rental car and why video surveillance showed Simmons behind Tyner at an ATM.
But Cipoletti said evidence found in the hotel room including Tyner's company laptop, Blackberry, and business cards clearly dispelled Simmons' version.
"It was totally ludicrous," she said of Simmons' claim.
Tyner, a Cincinnati man in his 50s, was staying at the Red Roof Inn, 1846 Catasauqua Road in Hanover Township, on Jan. 9, 2006 while working as a business consultant for American Management Services.
According to state police in Bethlehem:
At about 5:50 a.m., Simmons and Lopez went to Tyner's room, pointed a gun at him and took about $80 and a cell phone. The men later forced Tyner into the rental car and took him to a bank, where Simmons stood behind Tyner while he tried to withdraw cash from an ATM.
Tyner managed to slip away. Simmons and Lopez then left in the car, abandoning it near the motel with a .45-caliber handgun, a bottle of water and a knit hat inside. The items were tested for DNA.
Twenty-one months later, on Oct. 31, 2007, Simmons was shot several times in the 600 block of Chew Street, across from Union Baptist Church, and taken to Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest.
About two weeks later, a state trooper used a search warrant at the hospital to have a nurse draw samples of Simmons' blood, which matched DNA evidence police retrieved from the kidnapping.
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