A Seattle man was sentenced to six months of electronic home confinement for his role in an apparent kidnapping of a man from the Hazel Dell Walmart who reportedly owed a drug debt.
Joseph Miguel Hall, 51, entered an Alford plea Wednesday in Clark County Superior Court to gross misdemeanor charges of attempted unlawful imprisonment and fourth-degree assault. An Alford plea allows a defendant to argue his innocence but admit there’s enough evidence that he could be found guilty. Hall was originally charged with first-degree kidnapping.
Hall’s defense attorney, Todd Maybrown, said the plea deal for the reduced charges was, in part, because the victim was uncooperative with attorneys’ attempts to interview him. He said Hall also has no criminal history.
Hall told the judge that the case was a “regrettable incident that I’m sorry for and won’t happen again.”
A Clark County sheriff’s deputy responded around 1:45 p.m. April 20, 2020, to a report of a suspicious circumstance at the Walmart at 9000 N.E. Highway 99. Call notes indicated a witness saw a man grab and throw another man into a white Toyota Tacoma truck, according to an affidavit of probable cause.
The Toyota was rented by Hall out of Seattle. Hall and another Seattle man, identified as Thomas Anthony Dituri, 41, “plotted and carried out a successful kidnapping” of Zachary Ponchene, the affidavit says. They allegedly worked with a third, unidentified man, to set up Ponchene for the kidnapping.
The kidnapping apparently stemmed from a debt over drugs, court records state.
Surveillance video from the Walmart reportedly shows Ponchene fighting to get away from Dituri, the affidavit says.
Ponchene said he was forced into the truck and assaulted. The assailants took his cellphone and broke it so he couldn’t call for help or be tracked. He was threatened with a syringe of Ketamine, a drug “typically used to produce a trance-like state, pain relief, sedation and memory loss,” according to the affidavit. Ponchene said he also saw a knife, zip ties and rope.
He was taken to Eatonville, in Pierce County, where he escaped after acting like he needed to use the restroom. Ponchene locked himself inside the restroom for about two hours. He eventually opened the door and asked a stranger to call 911, court records state.
The assailants were gone before the Washington State Patrol arrived.
Dituri is also charged with first-degree kidnapping, but court records show he failed to appear at his trial readiness hearing. He was out of custody on supervised release.
