A man accused of kidnapping a 5- year-old girl from Kingman, Ariz., was arrested as he worked on a motorcycle in the garage of an Aurora home.
Authorities said that Virgil Kosmicki, 45, abducted his former stepdaughter, Jade Dunn, and demanded 2 ounces of methamphetamine for her return.
Dunn’s family first told investigators that Kosmicki asked for the drugs, then retracted that story and said he had demanded money, said Deborah McCarley, special agent with the FBI in Phoenix.
“Then it was (he) just wanted the mother to come to him and knew she would come if (he) had the child,” McCarley said.
An FBI analyst located the child after running data about the case into a computer, McCarley said.
“This analyst saw patterns in some of the data and was able to pinpoint where the child was,” she said.
The Mohave County Sheriff’s Office and FBI contacted the Aurora Police Department and asked officials to look for Kosmicki at a home in the 3300 block of South Dunkirk Way.
“We saw him in the garage and determined it was him. The little girl was there and unharmed. It was not so simple for him – he was in possession” of meth, said Aurora police spokesman Marcus Dudley.
Authorities did not disclose why Kosmicki brought the girl to Colorado or at whose residence he was found. Other people there appeared to be unaware there was a warrant for his arrest, Dudley said.
Kosmicki is being held in the Arapahoe County jail. He is being held on a drug charge and will be turned over to the FBI and extradited to Arizona.
Dunn was returned to her mother and family in Kingman on Wednesday, 13 days after she was taken.
The girl’s mother, Jennifer Dunn, had contacted authorities in Mohave County on Sept. 6, informing them that her daughter was taken from her school by Patricia Sanford, a family acquaintance. Sanford was on a contact list of those to whom the school could release the child, but she was not expected to pick her up on that date.
On Sunday, Sanford contacted the victim’s grandmother and told her Jade had been taken out of Arizona.
Sanford then began to relay messages to the grandmother from Kosmicki.
Sanford has not been arrested. The investigation is still underway; charges could be filed later, McCarley said.
Staff writer Tom McGhee can be reached at 303-954-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com.
