Jenna Leigh Roark is facing charges including hostage taking for allegedly keeping the child captive for five months until cops inadvertently stumbled upon him.
Roark, who does not have a lawyer listed in court records, was unable to be reached for comment. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in El Paso, which is prosecuting the case, did not respond to a request for comment.
The troopers summoned Roark’s other daughter, who is also unnamed in court papers, to the scene. When she arrived from Albuquerque, she said the baby’s name was Aiden Javael Smith, and that he had been born on May 19—2020. The baby wasn’t actually hers, she explained, but her fiancée was the boy’s biological mom.
It happened in May, the unidentified woman told officers. She said she had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border with her baby, and eventually approached two strangers, a man and a woman, at an El Paso apartment complex for directions to the Greyhound station, the complaint continues. “Jane would periodically send Victim pictures and videos of [her] Son, and Victim and [her] Son would speak on the phone two to three times a week,” the complaint states, without providing further detail.
“Jane” at first demanded $8,000 for the return of her child, later dropping the price to $5,800, the complaint says. In Roark’s version of events, “Richard” had originally sent the Honduran woman and her two other children across the border. The baby “was eventually brought to the United States by an unknown female and Roark was supposed to care for the child until payment by Victim was made,” the complaint states.
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