Elmont man arrested for kidnapping

An Elmont man was arrested on Nov. 28, along with a woman from Virginia, and charged with the abduction of a deaf woman from a Brooklyn street that occurred earlier that day.

According to police, Steven Benoit, 25, and Jasmine Wilkins, 19, of Norfolk, Va., kidnapped a 28-year-old woman, whose name has not been released, while she was walking home from her boyfriend’s home between 1 and 2 a.m. on Nov. 28. The couple pulled up to her in a black vehicle and began talking with her, and then Benoit grabbed her and threw her in the back of the vehicle, police said.

They drove her around for hours to several locations, in an attempt to force her into prostitution, according to police, and when she refused to perform sexual acts, the couple beat her.

Around 9 a.m., police said, the woman — who is from another state and was staying with her grandmother in Brooklyn — managed to break away from Benoit and Wilkins. The three were in Bedford Stuyvesant at the time, and the struggle was caught on a nearby hotel surveillance camera at the corner of Atlantic and Jamaica avenues.

The woman ran to a nearby post office, where officials called the New York City Police Department and escorted her to the 81st Precinct station. There she gave detectives a description of the suspects’ vehicle. At around 11:30 a.m., police said, officers found Benoit and Wilkins in the vehicle at the Imperial Hotel on East New York Avenue in Brooklyn, and chased them onto the Jackie Robinson Parkway. Benoit and Wilkins were taken into custody on the parkway shortly thereafter.

Benoit was been charged with kidnapping, robbery, assault, menacing and criminal obstruction of breathing, and Wilkins was charged with kidnapping and robbery. The woman was taken to a local hospital for treatment.