Jail time for kidnapping

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• Kidnapping charges laid
• Break-and-enters get time in jail
• Kidnap plot foiled
• Restaurant robber gets jail time
• Two arrested, two still at large following kidnapping and assault
• Jail for failing to comply

Two more people have been handed lengthy jail sentences for their roles in the kidnapping and prolonged beating of a man over a drug debt.

Four people were charged in connection with the April 2008 incident that saw a man in his 50s confined to a Victoria Street home, in which he was tied to a chair and beaten repeatedly over the course of several days.

A publication ban protects the identity of the victim and witnesses involved in the case.

Carlin Wayne Sponagle and Odessa Nicki Marchand, both in their early 20s, later pleaded guilty and were sentenced Friday in Prince George provincial court.

Sponagle received a 63-month jail term in addition to double credit for time served equivalent to 57 months, on charges of kidnapping, unlawful confinement, extortion and assault causing bodily harm.

Marchand was sentenced to 87 new months, with credit for 33 months’ time served, on single counts of kidnapping, unlawful confinement and assault causing bodily harm.

A number of other charges against them were dropped.

A third co-accused, Steve Marozoff, faced additional charges, including sexual assault, and was found guilty following trial. He was sentenced in April 2010 to 12 years in jail. The written reasons for judgment in the Marozoff case paint a disturbing picture of the incident.

The victim, who was addicted to crack, had been selling cocaine for Marchand, identified in court as a high-level dealer. Marchand had apparently given the man cocaine and money for safe-keeping, but the victim got into his boss’s supply and was unable to pay for it.

Just as he was about to skip town, the man was picked up outside a local gas station by Sponagle and Marozoff and driven to Marchand’s duplex on Victoria Street. Once inside, the victim was led to the basement where both men punched and kicked him, then forced him to undress before tying him to a chair.

In addition to the beatings, Sponagle burned the victim’s chest with a hot crack pipe, and Marchand later struck him across the nose with her glass crack pipe.

Later, Marozoff continued the beating on his own, and forced a toothbrush into the victim’s rectum, singed his crotch area with an aerosol spray can set alight, and attempted to carve the word “goof” into his back. The abusers also urinated on their victim.

Marchand eventually agreed to settle the debt for $2,500. The victim persuaded a former employer to meet him to provide the cash, but the lender instead drove the victim to the RCMP detachment and ended the ordeal.

A fourth co-accused in the case, Amanda Henschen, was sentenced on charges on kidnapping and extortion in May 2009 to time served of one year.

She set up the victim to be kidnapped from the gas station.