Jan 21, 2009 9:51 pm US/Pacific
2 Arrested In Alleged SF Murder-For-Hire Plot
SAN FRANCISCO (BCN) ―
San Francisco police have arrested two men in an alleged murder-for-hire plot involving a 23-year-old San Francisco woman, police said Wednesday.
Police said Emerson Portillo, 24, of San Francisco, and Deonte Bennett, 24, of Oakland, were arrested Saturday for allegedly plotting to kill Portillo's estranged girlfriend for $5,000.
According to police spokeswoman Sgt. Lyn Tomioka, on Friday around 7:30 p.m., the woman called Portillo asking him to pick her up in South San Francisco.
Portillo reportedly told her on the phone that he had been arrested for a traffic violation—a lie, Tomioka said—and that another man would have to pick her up, using her own car.
The second man, Bennett, whom the woman did not know, picked her up around 10 p.m., according to police.
Once inside the car, Bennett allegedly told her Portillo had ordered him to kill her and had already given him half of the money to do the job.
Bennett then held a gun to her head, police said.
The frightened woman told Bennett she would pay him $2,500 not to kill her, according to police.
The pair drove to the woman's home in the Bayview district, where Bennett took $200 in cash from the woman and forced her at gunpoint back into the car, police said.
According to police, after driving around the area, Bennett got out of the car and walked off, and the woman notified police about what had happened.
According to Tomioka, Portillo was retaliating for a prior incident between himself and the woman, whose name was not released.
Tomioka would not go into detail about the incident, other than to say it had not been reported to police at the time.
An investigation conducted by the San Francisco Police Department's domestic violence, special investigations, tactical and street crimes units led officers to Bennett, who was arrested around 6:20 p.m. Saturday in Emeryville, and to Portillo, who was arrested about 10 minutes later in San Francisco, police said.
Both men were booked on charges of attempted murder, murder for hire, conspiracy and false imprisonment, and remain in custody, according to police.
Bennett was charged Wednesday with kidnapping, assault with a firearm, robbery, attempted extortion and drug possession, according to the district attorney's office.
Portillo was charged with solicitation of murder, grand theft and possession of stolen property, the district attorney's office reported.
(© CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Bay City News contributed to this report.)
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