CLEVELAND, Ohio: Former Cleveland school bus driver Ariel Castro faces 977 criminal charges stemming from the abduction and decade-long imprisonment of three women who were freed two months ago, as 648 new charges were added on Friday, prosecutors said.
A grand jury’s indictment spans from August 2002, when Castro was accused of abducting the first of the women, through May of this year when the women and a 6-year-old girl fathered during her mother’s captivity escaped his Cleveland home.
“Today’s indictment moves us closer to resolution of this gruesome case,” Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty said. Castro stands accused of kidnapping the three women between 2002 and 2004 and brutalising them while holding them captive in his house over the next 10 years.
Castro, who turned 53 on Wednesday in jail, was indicted in June on 329 charges involving the first years of the women’s captivity. They and the girl were freed from his house on May 6.
Gina DeJesus, 23, Michelle Knight, 32, and Amanda Berry, 27, had been missing for around a decade. Three of the new charges involve endangering a child and a another was a felony kidnapping for the 6 years since the girl’s birth.
Reuters
