Carjacked man feared for life during ordeal

One arrested, others still sought

Friday, Aug. 29, 2008

St. Mary’s detectives charged a Lexington Park man this week with carjacking, and are working to develop additional suspects in the July 12 attack on John Michael Windsor.

‘‘I thought that I might get shot and die. I never knew that I’d walk away from it,” Windsor said Wednesday, shortly after a judge ordered that Dajuan Antwan Stafford remain jailed without bond.

After confronting Windsor last month outside the 7-Eleven convenience store in Lexington Park, two men ordered him at gunpoint to drive them to Washington, D.C., so they could buy drugs, detectives report. During the trip, the culprits made Windsor stop in Charles County, and used his bank account PIN and an automated teller machine to steal $300 from him.

‘‘I tried to talk them out of it, just taking my car and leaving me there, but they didn’t want to,” Windsor, a 23-year-old carpet installer, said of his conversation with his abductors as they robbed him. ‘‘It was really terrifying when that happened. It got worse.”

They traveled on to Washington, where the culprits made Windsor pick up two more people, court papers state, and drive the foursome around as they bought drugs and used them.

The two people picked up in Washington eventually got out of the 1999 Plymouth.

‘‘I thought I wouldn’t get back home, and get shot up in D.C.,” Windsor said, but his original assailants eventually told him to drive back to St. Mary’s. At about 10 a.m., eight hours after the incident began, the pair got out of Windsor’s car on Pacific Drive in Lexington Park.

‘‘I never knew I’d be dropping them off,” Windsor said. ‘‘I thought they would take me somewhere else in the county and shoot me there, and walk away.”

He added, ‘‘Once I dropped them off, ... I realized it was over, and I went straight home. I pulled away right quick.”

Earlier this month, court papers state, St. Mary’s crime lab technicians determined that a fingerprint from evidence in Windsor’s car matched Stafford’s fingerprints. Stafford, already in jail by then for missing court last June on a misdemeanor assault charge, was charged Tuesday by detective Michael Grimes with kidnapping, armed robbery, carjacking and theft.

St. Mary’s Assistant State’s Attorney Frank Cubero requested Wednesday in court that Stafford remain jailed without bond on the new charges ‘‘due to the severity of the case, and the fact that he’s already on probation” for a conviction that Stafford identified as attempted robbery.

St. Mary’s District Judge John F. Slade III concurred with the prosecutor’s request.

‘‘The court considers you a danger to the community,” the judge said.

Stafford told the judge that he formerly lived in Oxon Hill, and was employed doing roofing work.

Lt. Rick Burris of the St. Mary’s Bureau of Criminal Investigations said Thursday that Windsor handled the situation appropriately.

‘‘He did what he was directed to do and was released unharmed,” Burris said, ‘‘so you would have to say that he was successful in doing what he had to do to keep from being injured.”

The lieutenant said that efforts continue to identify the other culprits in the crime.

‘‘We have not developed names at this point,” he said.