FBI agents searched a Texas apartment Tuesday night and arrested a Denver man wanted on charges he kidnapped a cocaine dealer and his children and wife at gunpoint before stealing $30,000 in cash.
Tracy Morgan, 40, is awaiting extradition to Colorado, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Denver said this afternoon.
FBI agents in Dallas received a tip where Morgan was hiding out in Carrollton, Texas. When they searched the apartment, they found Morgan hiding.
The details of the arrest were not released.
Public records showed Morgan has divided his time in recent years between Denver and Texas, living in Dallas as recently as October 2009.
Two accomplices — one of them who allegedly wore a Denver police officer’s uniform in the 2009 abduction — were arrested two weeks ago, after a federal grand jury in Denver indicted them.
The case spun out of a two-year drug trafficking investigation, the FBI said.
All three of the men are alleged to be gang members: Morgan, who uses the street name Tre Dog; Killiu Ford, 37, of Aurora, also known as Caveman; and Augustus Sanford, 34, of Denver, who goes by Turk, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Sanford was already in custody on unrelated robbery charges at the time. Ford was arrested at his Aurora home.
They face federal kidnapping, conspiracy and gun charges. If convicted on any of the charges, each could face life in prison, prosecutors said.
According to the allegations, Morgan asked Mario Armendariz to deliver cocaine to a location, then had an accomplice attach a tracking device the car to find where the cocaine dealer lived.
On Sept. 22, 2009, Sanford wore a police uniform stolen by the son of a Denver officer who exchanged it for drugs, the indictment alleges.
Sanford and his accomplices allegedly caught up to Armendariz and his wife in Edgewater, as they were putting their daughters into car seats.
The said they were the police, and took Armendariz away in one vehicle and his wife anc children in another to the family’s home in Thornton, according to prosecutors.
Up to five men ransacked the home, as the wife insisted she knew nothing about drugs or money. Morgan allegedly told one of the men to take one of the children upstairs, as he pointed a gun at the other girl’s head.
“At that point the adult female victim pointed out where money was hidden, and the men grabbed a box containing approximately $30,000.
in cash,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a press release on Aug. 4.
Armendariz was left unharmed on a street in Thornton.
Joey Bunch: 303-954-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com
