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Students survive torture after mistaken identity(MP3_160K) · NO FILTER

0:00
Speaker 1: Growing up in an upscale suburb of Chicago, Nicholas Collias
0:04
Speaker 1: was the all American high school kid.
0:06
Speaker 2: What's your family like?
0:08
Speaker 3: What was it like growing up one of four boys?
0:10
Speaker 3: You know, just a really close knit family, very caring parents.
0:15
Speaker 3: And for me, I playing sports and especially football was
0:20
Speaker 3: a huge aspect of my life. I always wanted to
0:23
Speaker 3: continue playing football in college.
0:25
Speaker 2: You were the first one in your family to go
0:27
Speaker 2: to college, right.
0:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was the first one out of my direct
0:31
Speaker 3: family to go to college.
0:33
Speaker 1: His gridiron goal would become a reality at the University
0:36
Speaker 1: of Rochester.
0:37
Speaker 2: You must have been so excited when you got on
0:39
Speaker 2: the football team.
0:41
Speaker 3: Yeah.
0:41
Speaker 2: What were the team dynamics like?
0:44
Speaker 3: Very small school in private university, only eight thousand undergrad
0:50
Speaker 3: and so the football team was extremely close.
0:54
Speaker 1: But Nicholas wasn't all tackles and touchdowns.
1:01
Speaker 3: I'm also a classical pianist. You're quite accomplished, thank you.
1:05
Speaker 1: Yeah. Senior year and fall semester at the University of
1:10
Speaker 1: Rochester is in full swing. But this Friday night out
1:14
Speaker 1: would be like no other.
1:17
Speaker 2: So December fourth, what was that day like?
1:21
Speaker 3: So it was just kind of like any other day.
1:24
Speaker 1: Nicholas and his fellow teammate infraternity brother Annie okeek e Wu,
1:28
Speaker 1: are hanging out when Annie gets messaged on social media.
1:32
Speaker 3: And Annie kind of looked over to me and he
1:35
Speaker 3: was like, Hey, I have these two girls who want
1:38
Speaker 3: to hang out. So said, sure, why don't you have
1:41
Speaker 3: the two girls come over to my apartment and we
1:43
Speaker 3: can hang out with them there. So Annie took a
1:46
Speaker 3: quick picture of me and sent it to them.
1:49
Speaker 1: The girls must have liked what they saw. Not long after,
1:52
Speaker 1: Nicholas and Annie meet them in the parking lot of
1:55
Speaker 1: Nicholas's apartment.
1:56
Speaker 3: They didn't want to go in my apartment, and they
2:00
Speaker 3: suggested that we go over to their place.
2:03
Speaker 2: Were there any like red flags for you this time,
2:05
Speaker 2: like talking to them, did anything seem like really strange
2:08
Speaker 2: about them?
2:09
Speaker 3: They were in a nice car, nothing seemed unusual abnormal.
2:14
Speaker 1: The students jump in the girl's car and off they go.
2:18
Speaker 1: But soon the changing scenery catches Nicholas's attention.
2:22
Speaker 3: I started to notice that the neighborhood was not so
2:26
Speaker 3: good anymore. Then before I knew him, we showed up
2:29
Speaker 3: at the house.
2:31
Speaker 1: The address twenty two Harvest Street.
2:34
Speaker 3: It was dark out and from the outside it seemed
2:37
Speaker 3: like a decent house.
2:40
Speaker 1: A decent house and pretty girls. The night ahead was
2:44
Speaker 1: looking good, but once inside that all changed.
2:49
Speaker 2: The next forty hours had to be the most terrifying,
2:55
Speaker 2: horrific of your entire life. I remember physically filling sick
3:01
Speaker 2: reading about what happened.
3:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, I sat down on this couch in the living room,
3:06
Speaker 3: and next thing I knew is just the lights went
3:10
Speaker 3: out and about five to ten men and just masks
3:14
Speaker 3: come out, just screaming, so many loud noises, and just
3:19
Speaker 3: are all armed with bats and bars and knives, guns,
3:23
Speaker 3: And it's the first thing that just pops in. I mean,
3:26
Speaker 3: fy your flight. I got up as fast as I
3:28
Speaker 3: could and tried running to the side door. I only
3:31
Speaker 3: made it about halfway across the room before I felt
3:35
Speaker 3: something like being pressed up to the side of my
3:38
Speaker 3: upper leg. And then the next thing I remember is
3:42
Speaker 3: just being on the ground.
3:45
Speaker 1: Nicholas had been shot in the leg.
3:47
Speaker 3: My leg was like jel it was just flopping around,
3:51
Speaker 3: and somehow I managed to get back to my feet
3:55
Speaker 3: and get to the door.
3:57
Speaker 1: He may have made it there, but he wasn't home free.
4:00
Speaker 3: And I remember looking out the door and seeing these
4:04
Speaker 3: two other girls that were standing on the outside, and
4:08
Speaker 3: they were holding the door closed from the outside, just
4:12
Speaker 3: making sure we couldn't escape.
4:14
Speaker 2: So the two girls that like said come hang out
4:16
Speaker 2: with us, they were the ones holding the door shut.
4:18
Speaker 3: Or was two different two different girls.
4:21
Speaker 1: What it seemed like an innocent college date night was
4:24
Speaker 1: suddenly looking like a vicious setup. But why now injured
4:29
Speaker 1: and delirious?
4:30
Speaker 3: Was nothing I could do, And then I just remembered
4:33
Speaker 3: getting hit over the head with a bat and I'm
4:36
Speaker 3: laying on the ground. These men are just screaming, just
4:40
Speaker 3: don't fight us, just take it and don't try and escape.
4:45
Speaker 1: It's Friday night. University of Rochester football players Nicholas Kolias
4:52
Speaker 1: and Annie O'kihiwu are excited to hang out with a
4:55
Speaker 1: couple of girls they met on Facebook. The women the
5:00
Speaker 1: students to twenty two harvestreets. But it won't be the
5:04
Speaker 1: kind of hookup the boys are expected. It's a setup.
5:08
Speaker 3: I was just like freaking out and I didn't know
5:11
Speaker 3: what was going on.
5:12
Speaker 1: Multiple men wearing masks jump out and attack the students.
5:16
Speaker 1: Nicholas is shot in the leg and hit over the
5:19
Speaker 1: head with a back.
5:20
Speaker 2: How did you not pass out from the painting?
5:23
Speaker 3: I don't know.
5:24
Speaker 1: It's only the beginning of a forty hour nightmare.
5:27
Speaker 3: They tied up her hands and legs and dragged Annie
5:31
Speaker 3: and I into this bathroom.
5:33
Speaker 1: Nicholas's beaten with a head strimmer, a bat, a pipe,
5:37
Speaker 1: then hit over the head again, this time with a
5:40
Speaker 1: fluorescent bolt.
5:42
Speaker 3: I just remember like touching my head and having all
5:46
Speaker 3: this blood just coming down everywhere. They were having so
5:50
Speaker 3: much enjoyment with it that they started recording it.
5:55
Speaker 1: A warning, the video you're about to see is graphic. Well.
5:59
Speaker 1: One of the kidnappers records two of the others are
6:02
Speaker 1: seen threatening Annie with a hedge trimmer and then prodding
6:05
Speaker 1: Nicholas lying on the floor covered in blood. After hours
6:10
Speaker 1: of torture, the mash men leave. Both students, but especially Nicholas,
6:15
Speaker 1: are in bad shade, and it's not over. The monsters
6:18
Speaker 1: return early the next morning for more.
6:21
Speaker 3: They were extremely organized. They had nicknames, they had roles
6:25
Speaker 3: for individuals. They take our wall and everything from me,
6:29
Speaker 3: my keys, my phone, my wallet.
6:32
Speaker 1: The captors put Annie in the bedroom, they keep Nicholas
6:35
Speaker 1: in the bathroom.
6:35
Speaker 3: They put me into the shower where they started washing
6:39
Speaker 3: me or the entire tubb is just red.
6:43
Speaker 1: Turns out Nicholas hadn't been shot once. He'd been shot twice.
6:47
Speaker 3: I was shot in my other leg as well.
6:49
Speaker 2: Did you feel I mean, they're washing you, like, were
6:53
Speaker 2: they gonna let you go?
6:55
Speaker 4: At that point?
6:55
Speaker 3: Honestly, while they were bathing me, they I had other
7:00
Speaker 3: individuals who were cleaning the house and reaching everything down,
7:04
Speaker 3: so it was almost as if they were like trying
7:06
Speaker 3: to cover their tracks.
7:08
Speaker 1: The plan is to not let them go.
7:10
Speaker 2: How did you keep going?
7:13
Speaker 3: I don't know. I thought about my parents and how
7:16
Speaker 3: much I mean to them and how much they mean
7:19
Speaker 3: to me, and I didn't want this to be the end.
7:23
Speaker 2: And that's what it was for me as well, the
7:26
Speaker 2: fact that my parents would always love me, and for me,
7:28
Speaker 2: that was worth surviving for. So that's how I was
7:32
Speaker 2: able to make the decision that I would do whatever
7:34
Speaker 2: it took to survive. It didn't matter what it was.
7:37
Speaker 1: Now. When the bedroom was annie, survive is what Nicholas
7:41
Speaker 1: is desperately trying to do.
7:43
Speaker 3: That's when these individuals were holding me a gunpoint, and
7:47
Speaker 3: they were making me call all these different financial institutions
7:51
Speaker 3: to get my withdrawal limits increased and doing whatever they
7:55
Speaker 3: could to get money out of my accounts.
7:58
Speaker 1: But is all this really just about money? Well, the
8:02
Speaker 1: football players are negotiating for their lives. Their absence is
8:05
Speaker 1: not going unnoticed. Friends and family contact the University of
8:09
Speaker 1: Rochester Public Safety Department, which alerts Rochester PD.
8:14
Speaker 5: As we started to put all this whole story together,
8:17
Speaker 5: we realized something really was not right.
8:19
Speaker 4: First of all, their phones were both phones were turned off.
8:22
Speaker 5: The second thing was that these both gentlemen were prolific
8:25
Speaker 5: on social media, always updating what they were doing, where
8:28
Speaker 5: they were, and that had stopped cold Friday night. Also
8:32
Speaker 5: the fact that they had been out of contact with
8:35
Speaker 5: everybody else.
8:37
Speaker 1: Rochester Police launched a full investigation, getting church warrants for
8:41
Speaker 1: the boys' phones in Facebook accounts.
8:43
Speaker 4: Trying to track down the two women that they had met.
8:46
Speaker 1: Up with, find the girls, and maybe find the boys. Well.
8:51
Speaker 1: Comps are quickly working to identify who these two women are.
8:55
Speaker 1: Nicholas and Annie are coming to grips with the reality
8:58
Speaker 1: that there's no way out there trapped.
9:01
Speaker 2: Were you and Annie ever left alone or was there
9:03
Speaker 2: always someone there watching you?
9:05
Speaker 3: There was always someone at least one or two individuals
9:09
Speaker 3: that were kind of watching over us.
9:11
Speaker 2: And so during that time. You guys didn't have a
9:14
Speaker 2: chance to be like, what are we going to do?
9:15
Speaker 2: How are we going to get away? Or anything like that.
9:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, not really. I mean obviously he was in better
9:22
Speaker 3: shape than I was. He wasn't shot.
9:25
Speaker 2: Did he seem scared, Yeah, I mean.
9:27
Speaker 3: He was scared, but throughout the whole ordeal, he kind
9:31
Speaker 3: of had this like optimistic view, they're going to release us,
9:36
Speaker 3: But it was hard for me to kind of see
9:39
Speaker 3: that light. It only got worse as time went on,
9:43
Speaker 3: so much worse.
9:44
Speaker 2: I I want to ask you a question, and if
9:47
Speaker 2: you don't want to answer it, that's okay, because it
9:50
Speaker 2: is so terrifying coming forward and because there are so
9:53
Speaker 2: many prejudices, stereotypes, misunderstandings around this whole topic, and and
10:00
Speaker 2: especially for men. But were you ever sexually abused while
10:04
Speaker 2: you were held captive?
10:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, during the events that took place at one point,
10:10
Speaker 3: these these individuals forced me to kind of do things
10:16
Speaker 3: and it was just terrible and yeah, it happened, and
10:22
Speaker 3: it's the worst feeling out there.
10:25
Speaker 1: University of Rochester Public safety officers in Rochester PD now
10:30
Speaker 1: know the clock is taking They soon catch a break.
10:33
Speaker 1: They tracked down the girl who messaged on it. Her
10:36
Speaker 1: name is Samantha Hughes. She was less than helpful.
10:40
Speaker 4: She was trying to give us the run around.
10:41
Speaker 5: She had to go to work, so she said, can
10:44
Speaker 5: I meet up with you tomorrow and we can finish this.
10:46
Speaker 4: At that point she really wasn't free to leave.
10:49
Speaker 1: Then they find the second girl, Leah Jiliotti. Neither are
10:53
Speaker 1: making it easy for investigators.
10:55
Speaker 4: It was exhausting. So they'd give us a little bit
10:57
Speaker 4: of a lead, we'd.
10:58
Speaker 5: Be able to follow up on that, we'd wind it
11:01
Speaker 5: in the dead end. We'd have to come back and
11:02
Speaker 5: get more information.
11:04
Speaker 1: Then a chilling admission.
11:06
Speaker 4: They said, don't worry, they're not going to be hurt.
11:07
Speaker 5: And a normal person that you meet up with is
11:10
Speaker 5: not going to tell that to the police. So we
11:13
Speaker 5: knew that it wasn't normal.
11:16
Speaker 1: The ones who lure the football players into the sadistic
11:19
Speaker 1: trap give up even more.
11:21
Speaker 5: After about six hours, we were able to get a
11:23
Speaker 5: couple of good locations where the Euros last saw Niko
11:29
Speaker 5: and Ami.
11:31
Speaker 1: Are they getting closer to finding the boys? Undercover officers
11:35
Speaker 1: monitor the two locations. Then Rochester Deputy Police Chief Scott
11:40
Speaker 1: Peters puts together a plan with the swat commanders, this.
11:43
Speaker 5: Is going to be a house, Addrescu. And I said,
11:46
Speaker 5: here's the two locations. Plan cold hits on both houses.
11:50
Speaker 5: If you're gonna do one and then we're gonna have
11:51
Speaker 5: to do the second one. If the first house wasn't.
11:53
Speaker 1: Right, Getting it right the first time could be the
11:57
Speaker 1: difference between life and death. It's now Sunday morning at
12:01
Speaker 1: twenty two harves Street, more then thirty hours in well,
12:05
Speaker 1: you were.
12:05
Speaker 2: Being held captive. Was there ever a moment that you
12:09
Speaker 2: felt like you were going to give up?
12:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, things have reached a fevered pitch.
12:15
Speaker 3: They came into the room with their masks on and
12:18
Speaker 3: guns and weapons, and they started saying that I was
12:23
Speaker 3: lying to them and that my cards weren't working anymore,
12:27
Speaker 3: and that they said that they were going to kill us.
12:31
Speaker 1: Nicholas says, the kidnappers turned on some loud music to
12:34
Speaker 1: cover the sounds of what's to come.
12:37
Speaker 3: They were just sprang bullets everywhere, and they were putting
12:41
Speaker 3: the gun down our throat and putting the gun to
12:45
Speaker 3: our body and just moving it. At the last seconds,
12:48
Speaker 3: and I was holding on his hand, and I just
12:50
Speaker 3: knew that like one of these bullets were gonna hit me,
12:54
Speaker 3: and I was gonna die.
12:58
Speaker 1: It's now Sunday night, almost forty hours into this kidnapping nightmare.
13:04
Speaker 3: My body was in such bad shape, and you know,
13:07
Speaker 3: I was just kind of feeling worse and just not
13:10
Speaker 3: optimistic at all that we would be found.
13:15
Speaker 1: What Nicholas Khalius doesn't know is that the cavalry is
13:18
Speaker 1: on the way. Remember Hughes and Juliotti, the girls who
13:23
Speaker 1: lured the football players of that house of whoores. They
13:26
Speaker 1: eventually gave police two addresses. A swat team is now
13:30
Speaker 1: ready to hit the first twenty two Harves Street, not
13:34
Speaker 1: even knowing if it's the right house, they roll up.
13:38
Speaker 4: It was purely silent.
13:41
Speaker 1: Then out of the darkness appears a figure. Someone from
13:45
Speaker 1: inside comes out and sees the swarm of a heavily
13:48
Speaker 1: armed swat.
13:49
Speaker 4: Team very quickly, and he ran back inside and shut
13:51
Speaker 4: the door.
13:53
Speaker 3: The individual who was nicknamed the Caretaker came into the room,
13:58
Speaker 3: and this was the only time I actually saw any
14:02
Speaker 3: of the individual's faces without a mask on. He was
14:06
Speaker 3: like trying to untie us real fast.
14:10
Speaker 1: Outside, the swap team sets the explosive charges on two doors.
14:14
Speaker 1: They call break.
14:15
Speaker 4: Then both explosive charges go off.
14:20
Speaker 3: The house just lit up.
14:22
Speaker 4: The door gets blown inside.
14:25
Speaker 3: I didn't know what was going on.
14:27
Speaker 5: As the doorway opens up and one person will laugh,
14:30
Speaker 5: another person will go right.
14:31
Speaker 1: Upon entry, the swat team sees two individuals.
14:35
Speaker 5: There was a two suspects inside the living room. Took
14:38
Speaker 5: them in custody.
14:39
Speaker 1: Cops still aren't sure they're in the hostage house. They
14:42
Speaker 1: make their way through the kitchen. Then they see a
14:45
Speaker 1: closed door.
14:46
Speaker 5: As they go through the door, they look in there
14:48
Speaker 5: and sure enough, there's the two football players are sitting
14:51
Speaker 5: on the floor. There was remnants of taper on their
14:54
Speaker 5: ankles and hands. They just looked like they'd been through hell.
14:58
Speaker 3: I thought the house was being burned down. In reality,
15:01
Speaker 3: they were saving my life.
15:03
Speaker 4: We rolled the dice on the first house we hit.
15:05
Speaker 4: It was the correct one.
15:06
Speaker 5: This is once in a career rescue.
15:10
Speaker 2: Do you remember when they came into the room.
15:13
Speaker 3: At first, I was kind of scared because it was
15:15
Speaker 3: more individuals just covered in body armor and these huge guns,
15:20
Speaker 3: and I was just terrib scared too. Yeah, So I
15:25
Speaker 3: pull my hands up and I'm like, I'm I'm innocent, Like,
15:28
Speaker 3: please don't shoot me again. They got us out of
15:31
Speaker 3: the house, got me into an ambulance and off to
15:34
Speaker 3: the hospital.
15:35
Speaker 1: After more than forty hours of sure hell, Nicholas and
15:39
Speaker 1: Annie are reunited with their families.
15:43
Speaker 3: I just remember seeing both my parents and more specifically
15:47
Speaker 3: my father. He just came over to me and this
15:52
Speaker 3: stretcher and stuff, and he was like, you know, you're
15:55
Speaker 3: safe now, and you're gonna be all right.
16:00
Speaker 1: Spend the next twenty five days in intensive care. As
16:04
Speaker 1: the investigation begins, cops find a stomach churning video on
16:09
Speaker 1: one of the violent kidnappers cell phones, again a warning
16:13
Speaker 1: what you're about to see is deeply disturbing. Annie lies
16:17
Speaker 1: bleeding on the floor as the attacker prods and threatens
16:20
Speaker 1: him with an electric hedge trimmer. The camera swings right
16:24
Speaker 1: to reveal Nicholas curled up in pain as the kidnappers
16:27
Speaker 1: throw slurs and prod his injured leg. When they take
16:39
Speaker 1: four pounds from this right here, stop.
16:46
Speaker 2: Gets the boys.
16:51
Speaker 6: You.
16:58
Speaker 1: Cops believe the STU were rescued in the Ni Katan.
17:02
Speaker 5: The plan really was to basically drain all the bank accounts.
17:05
Speaker 5: Nico had a pretty good sum of money. What the
17:09
Speaker 5: bad guys didn't know is you can't access those funds
17:12
Speaker 5: on the weekend, so they were waiting until eight o'clock
17:15
Speaker 5: in the morning when they could actually access those accounts,
17:18
Speaker 5: and I'm sure.
17:18
Speaker 4: Once they did that, they probably would have killed them.
17:22
Speaker 1: A month later, all of the perpetrators are in custody,
17:25
Speaker 1: an unbelievable nine in total, five men and four women.
17:31
Speaker 3: I kind of always thought of women as like harmless
17:35
Speaker 3: individuals that kun herd a fly.
17:37
Speaker 2: I know exactly what you mean. When I was kidnapped
17:39
Speaker 2: and I was kidnapped, I was terrified. I remember when
17:42
Speaker 2: I heard the woman's voice, and I remember thinking, it's
17:44
Speaker 2: going to be okay, It's.
17:45
Speaker 4: Going to be all right.
17:45
Speaker 2: There's a woman there, like nothing that bad can happen.
17:49
Speaker 2: Sometimes I wondered maybe she was worse than he was.
17:52
Speaker 1: Mineral County District Attorney Sandra Durley says the case was
17:57
Speaker 1: like no other and deserved.
18:00
Speaker 6: I knew that it was going to be high profile
18:03
Speaker 6: and it affected a lot of people in this community personally,
18:06
Speaker 6: so I really wanted to make sure that my best
18:08
Speaker 6: people were on it.
18:08
Speaker 7: This case is a lot of things. It's tragic, sad,
18:12
Speaker 7: but what it certainly is is just disgusting.
18:18
Speaker 1: Of the nefarious nine. Five ended up taking plea deals,
18:22
Speaker 1: including Samantha Hughes and Leah Giliotti, the women who lured
18:26
Speaker 1: Nicholas and Annie to the house that night. The five
18:30
Speaker 1: received sentences of thirteen to thirty five years in prison.
18:34
Speaker 1: The other four take their chances at trial.
18:38
Speaker 7: The evidence was overwhelming. As Christine and I got ready
18:41
Speaker 7: for this trial, it was harder to figure out what
18:43
Speaker 7: we weren't going to use than it was to figure
18:46
Speaker 7: out what we were going to use. There was just
18:49
Speaker 7: that much.
18:51
Speaker 1: But there was one key piece of evidence the jurors
18:54
Speaker 1: would see.
18:55
Speaker 7: The cell phone video was clearly, in my opinion, the
18:59
Speaker 7: most cent piece of evidence and perhaps yes also the
19:02
Speaker 7: most damning as well. Essentially showed thirty seconds of torture.
19:07
Speaker 7: And when you put that in perspective, that was only
19:09
Speaker 7: thirty seconds out of almost forty hours, so you can
19:12
Speaker 7: only imagine what they went through during the other thirty
19:15
Speaker 7: nine hours and change.
19:18
Speaker 1: Annie and Nicholas, who both testify against their kidnappers, watched
19:22
Speaker 1: that grotesque video in court.
19:25
Speaker 3: It was terrible to take me back to that time,
19:29
Speaker 3: and it was just so sickening and heartbreaking.
19:33
Speaker 1: The ringleader, Lidell Strickland played a starring role in that video.
19:38
Speaker 7: Lydel Strickland was enjoying what was going on.
19:42
Speaker 1: He's also seen in other damning videos comps fined around town.
19:47
Speaker 8: There were just multiple banks all over the city of
19:49
Speaker 8: Rochester that Lydel Strickland was seen using on Nicholas's TD
19:53
Speaker 8: Ameritrade card. It's clearly his face one video, he actually
19:58
Speaker 8: pulls up still wearing a asked that he was wearing
20:01
Speaker 8: during the other cell phone video.
20:04
Speaker 1: After a month long trial, all four defendants are found
20:07
Speaker 1: guilty on all counts. Three of the defendants are sentenced
20:11
Speaker 1: seven to fifteen years. Lidelle Strickling gets one hundred and
20:15
Speaker 1: fifty five years to life.
20:17
Speaker 6: I feel like for each of these defendants and for
20:19
Speaker 6: these victims, that justice was served.
20:22
Speaker 1: Nicholas has filed a ten million dollar lawsuit against the
20:26
Speaker 1: nine kidnappers. But what was the monster's motive for perpetrating
20:31
Speaker 1: this horrific crime. It was not just about money, but revenge.
20:35
Speaker 1: And in a shocking twist, it turns out the kidnappers
20:38
Speaker 1: got the wrong guys.
20:40
Speaker 4: It was definitely a case of mistaken identity.
20:42
Speaker 1: Mistaken identity, that's right. Cops say the target was a
20:46
Speaker 1: completely different. University of Rochester football player Isaiah Smith. Smith,
20:52
Speaker 1: a star athlete and well known drug dealer, found a
20:54
Speaker 1: spare key to Annie and his twin brother's apartment. Cops say,
20:58
Speaker 1: Isaiah Smith, then you use that apartment to rob Likedelle
21:02
Speaker 1: Strickland in his gang of thoughts. Strickland and company then
21:05
Speaker 1: wanted revenge, so they told the girls to go get
21:08
Speaker 1: the football players who ripped them off.
21:10
Speaker 5: The drug dealers when they came back, were looking for
21:13
Speaker 5: the people who lived in that apartment, not realizing that
21:16
Speaker 5: they were. It was just being used by somebody else,
21:18
Speaker 5: So it was it was definitely a case of mistaken identity.
21:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's completely totally unbelievable and it's susceptible.
21:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, But Nicholas says there's more to the story and
21:32
Speaker 1: is holding the University of Rochester responsible. He says, after
21:36
Speaker 1: Isaiah Smith was arrested, football coaches bailed Smith out of jail,
21:41
Speaker 1: then failed to and formed the student body of the
21:43
Speaker 1: severity of the chrome, all in an attempt to give
21:47
Speaker 1: this star athlete preferential treatment.
21:50
Speaker 3: The university was just completely negligent in what they did.
21:55
Speaker 3: My life was put in jeopardy and numerous occasions, all
21:59
Speaker 3: because of you know, Isaiah getting bailed out and poor
22:04
Speaker 3: decision making on many university officials.
22:09
Speaker 1: Nicholas plans to file a civil suit against the University
22:12
Speaker 1: of Rochester. We contacted the University of Rochester and it
22:16
Speaker 1: responded in part, we disagree with mister Callias's assertions, but
22:22
Speaker 1: we continue to wish in the best as he moves
22:24
Speaker 1: forward after this traumatic experience. Sadly, Nicholas and Annie are
22:30
Speaker 1: no longer friends. He says during their forty hour ordeal,
22:34
Speaker 1: he received more of the abuse than Annie did, and
22:37
Speaker 1: he thinks she knows why.
22:39
Speaker 3: I just feel like, with everything that happened, I feel
22:44
Speaker 3: like he had more to do with it than he
22:48
Speaker 3: will ever admit. I was the one that got majority
22:52
Speaker 3: of all the beating and abuse, and so, you know,
22:56
Speaker 3: it's just not a good experience to have someone who
23:01
Speaker 3: you thought you could trust and just kind of being
23:04
Speaker 3: the complete opposite to you.
23:07
Speaker 1: We reached out to Annie for comment, but he never responded.
23:12
Speaker 1: There was no evidence presented at trial that Annie was
23:15
Speaker 1: in any way involved in planning or carrying out the
23:18
Speaker 1: kidnap it. Annie Wu has never been considered anything other
23:23
Speaker 1: than a victim Nicholas is now trying to move on
23:27
Speaker 1: with his life. He says, although the nightmare he survived
23:31
Speaker 1: will never leave him, he's working hard to not let
23:34
Speaker 1: it define him people.
23:36
Speaker 2: Who survive very violent crimes. Yes, it's a miracle. It's
23:44
Speaker 2: miraculous that we're here. But I don't think people realize
23:47
Speaker 2: that sometimes surviving is harder.
23:50
Speaker 3: No, I couldn't agree more. I mean, it's not easy,
23:54
Speaker 3: you know. For me, I have always said that I
23:57
Speaker 3: don't want this to hold me back. I don't want
23:59
Speaker 3: this to label me. I'm not going to let these
24:04
Speaker 3: individuals mess up the rest of my life. And so
24:09
Speaker 3: that's why I'm trying to be optimistic and just positive
24:12
Speaker 3: and move forward in the best way that I can.