A Colombian national was brought to Miami to face his fate in a U.S. courtroom, charged with the gritty real-life drama of kidnapping two American soldiers out for a night in Bogota, as Local 10 News reported. Pedro Jose Silva Ochoa, 47, dubbed "Tata," and his cadre allegedly drugged the GIs to swipe their valuables in a caper out of a crime thriller.
It all went down on March 5, 2020, when the soldiers, stationed temporarily in Colombia, decided to kick back at a pub in Bogota's bustling entertainment district; there, one of Silva Ochoa's henchmen slipped drugs into their drinks, leading to a night they'd never remember – they were driven away, plundered for their wallets, and left unconscious until the next day, one harrowing ordeal that Silva Ochoa possibly never thought would end in a Miami federal court room as he's charged including kidnapping an internationally protected person, conspiracy to kidnap, and assault.
Coming clean on his part of the crime, Jeffersson Arango Castellanos, another piece of the puzzle, was shipped from Colombia to the States last April pleading guilty to the related charges this January as the Department of Justice announced. The extradition and trial orchestration highlight the international threads, with help from Chilean and Colombian law enforcement, the FBI's Miami Field Office, and more knitting together a case against a man who saw soldiers not as persons but as targets ripe for the picking.
