MIAMI-DADE DRUG SUPPLIER TORTURED, GODDAUGHTER ABDUCTED

MIAMI -- The 3-year-old goddaughter of a cocaine supplier was held
overnight and the supplier was bound, gagged, beaten and tortured with
a hot iron, federal prosecutors charged Wednesday after indicting 33
people in two Miami-Dade County street drug rings.

Prosecutors, the FBI and police have tied the defendants to more than
120 pounds of cocaine trafficking in the past year in Miami's Liberty
City and Carol City neighborhoods. Twenty-five were arrested by mid-
afternoon, and all face possible life prison sentences on drug
conspiracy charges.

"It's been a clean sweep of an entire group," U.S. Attorney Marcos
Jimenez said.

Jon Solomon, newly appointed agent in charge of the FBI's Miami
office, said, "We have intelligence that there are shootings and
murders associated with the group."

In the double abduction, prosecutors said two dealers planned to rob
their alleged supplier, Roody LaGuerre, who brought his goddaughter
with him to a meeting last October.

After being tortured and beaten, LaGuerre escaped by jumping out of a
trunk as he was being driven from one house to another. The young girl
was unharmed, but she was held overnight until arrangements were made
for her release.

LaGuerre and his accused kidnappers are among those indicted in two
cases charging everyone from midlevel distributors to street dealers.