Man receives life sentence for involvement in 2016 Clovis kidnapping

FRESNO COUNTY, Calif. (KFSN) -- A man who played a role in the abduction and torture of a 13-year-old girl received his sentence on Monday while three of his family members wait to learn their punishments.

"The facts of this case were absolutely atrocious," Judge Alvin Harrell III told Brandon Stanley Roque. He is one of the men involved in the 2016 kidnapping of a Clovis teen.

Roque was just 18 years old when prosecutors say he played a supporting role in his mother's plot to kidnap and assault a young girl.

"It's just pure evil," the judge said. "That's what it is. Pure evil."

Action News is not allowed to name the victim because she was only 13. Her father and Roque's mother, Sandra Garcia, were dating, and they all lived together.

But there was tension, and Garcia became upset after Johan Gidstedt asked her and her sons to move out of his home.

That's when prosecutors say Garcia developed a plot with at least two other family members to have the teen girl taped up and shoved into a car trunk when she got home from school.

As the kidnapping and sexual assault got underway, prosecutors tell Action News that Roque was signing his young half-brother out of school.

That freed up Sandra Garcia to take the victim's younger sister out of the house, so she was not home during the kidnapping.

"While acknowledging his role in this conspiracy is the least serious of all of the participants, it was still significant in that it was necessary to eliminate a witness who could've stopped it," Deputy District Attorney Adam Christopherson said.

Because of that involvement, Roque faced several charges, including kidnapping, torture, and dissuading a witness. But prosecutors dropped those last fall when Roque pleaded no contest to conspiracy.

In court on Monday, Judge Harrell sentenced Roque to seven years to life in prison.

As for Brandon Roque's mother and brother, a jury found Garcia and Mark Anthony Roque guilty of ten total charges, while their cousin, Miguel Carriedo, pleaded guilty to two.

They are all due for sentencing in the coming weeks.

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