EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) — An Amber Alert issued for a 2-year-old El Paso boy Thursday triggered a manhunt and hours-long SWAT standoff with the boy’s father in East El Paso.
El Paso Police took the boy’s father, Miguel Montoya, into custody at Studio 6, located along the 11000 block of Gateway Blvd West at Lomaland, just before 9 p.m. Thursday evening. The boy was located, reportedly unharmed, and later returned to his mother.
Cheyenne Roman, the mother of missing Kenji Montoya, detailed the traumatic events leading up to the abduction of her non-verbal, autistic son by his father late Wednesday evening.
According to Roman, the child’s father, Miguel Angel Montoya, planned to abduct them in an elaborate plan he concocted to lure his 12-year-old daughter from a previous relationship so he could kill the girl.
El Paso Police say Montoya has a previous pending felony criminal warrant for domestic violence. Roman alleges Montoya previously assaulted her and is also facing similar allegations from his 12-year-old daughter. She also told KTSM Child Protective Services enacted a “safety plan” on Montoya, preventing him from being around his children without a social worker present.
Roman claims Montoya continued to stalk her despite a protective order and cameras installed around her apartment.
Montoya was allegedly hiding in the bedroom with a katana sword when she arrived home Wednesday.
“He popped up from the bedroom. So he had been there, and he told me he had been there a few hours and he had made some plan that he was going to hurt his daughter and he was going to kidnap me and Kenji in order to get his daughter. He wanted to murder her,” Roman explained.
She says Montoya forced her to drive them to her sister’s home to pick up her niece, who he thought would help lure his 12-year-old daughter from his ex-wife’s home. According to Roman, Montoya had a “large bag” of cocaine that he was doing as she drove to her sister’s home.
“He wanted us to drive off to an unmarked location and for me, my niece, and my son to drop them off so that he could murder his daughter.” She went on to say, “He told me that if he got [his daughter], he wouldn’t kill the rest of us, but that if we didn’t comply, he was going to kill us.”
When Roman’s sister came out of the house with her niece, she struggled to get out of the car and call for help.
“I was trying to open my back seat to get my son. But since the car was still going, I tried to pull the handle. And I guess, like the wind, it was pushing it inside, so I couldn’t, I couldn’t get the door open all the way. At that point, I guess he was able to get into the driver’s seat, and he sped off, and my sister flew off into the bush. And that’s the last time I saw my son,” an emotional Roman told KTSM.
Montoya fled from the home in Roman’s 2020 silver Dodge Journey SUV with the boy in the car and her phone and other belongings. EPPD believes he later abandoned her Dodge Journey and switched cars to a red 2008 Chevrolet Cobalt bearing Texas license plate TRH6179.
“I don’t know what he’s capable of doing to my son, but if he was able to have this idea that he was going to kill his daughter, he could very much have killed my son. My son is autistic, and he’s nonverbal. And a lot of how he expresses himself is by crying. And he doesn’t have patience for that,” explained Roman Thursday morning.
Miguel Montoya is now facing Aggravated Kidnapping charges and could be facing additional charges pending the outcome of El Paso Police’s full investigation.
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