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Remember how your mom warned you never to pick up a hitchhiker?
She was probably thinking about someone like Schmuck of the Week honoree Sarah Stanigar — if the folks at the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office are right., that is
Stanigar is accused of trying to force a woman who was kind enough to offer a ride to drive her halfway across the country.
Her inducement? Well, for one thing, she allegedly claimed to have a bomb….
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At about 8:45 p.m. on March 13, according to the FCSO, deputies with the department were contacted by the Colorado Springs Police Department about a possible kidnapping.
And both the suspected perpetrator and the victim were thought to be headed toward Fremont County.
A man had called the cops in Colorado Springs after receiving text messages from his girlfriend. According to him, she’d picked up a female hitchhiker, later identified as Stanigar, who claimed to have a gun and demanded that she be taken to Michigan.
This destination jibes with Stanigar’s not terribly active Facebook page, which lists her home as Detroit.
The posts on the page are privacy protected, but several photos are on view, including a 2010 shot of a pregnant Stanigar….
…as well as a shot from early 2011 in which she’s really pregnant….
…plus a profile pic featuring a strategically placed finger:
Texting while driving is seldom a great idea, but in this case, it was vital.
The female driver was able to text that she and Stanigar were heading south on Colorado Highway 115 into Fremont County, then offered periodic updates. For instance, she noted that they traveled through Florence into Canony City, where they stopped at a Loaf ‘N Jug before heading east on Highway 50.
Oh yeah: She also texted that Stanigar claimed to have a bomb in her backpack.
Fortunately, that wasn’t the case — and there was no gun, either, when Fremont County deputies, joined by representatives from the Canon City Police Department and the Colorado State Patrol, pulled the car over on Highway 50 on the east side of Canon City. Stanigar was taken into custody without incident, the FCSO notes.
The lack of actual weapons didn’t mean all was forgiven. Stanigar was arrested on suspicion of first-degree kidnapping, aggravated robbery, felony menacing, reckless endangerment and obstruction of a telephone — although she didn’t manage to prevent those texts.
The best news of all? The woman who’d encountered Stanigar wasn’t physically harmed.
Still, we doubt if that’ll make your mom a bigger fan of picking up hitchhikers.