Billy Underwood and Dyllan Martin. (Multnomah County)
An 87-year-old woman kidnapped by her great-grandson and his friend told them to "behave yourself in prison" as they were sentenced to years behind bars for the bizarre crime.
Hazel Abel was snatched from her home, bound and gagged, stuffed into the trunk of her car with her pet Chihuahua and driven 200 miles from Washington to Oregon before she untied herself and escaped when the perpetrators stopped at a Walmart, the Tri-City Herald reports.
The Kennewick, Wash., woman attended the sentencing in Benton County Superior Court Thursday and heard her great-grandson Dyllan Martin apologize to her as he was sentenced to 9 ½ years in prison for his role in the November 2015 kidnapping, the paper reported.
His cohort Billy Underwood also apologized as he was sentenced to 10 ½ years in prison, according to the Herald.
“I can’t begin to tell you boys how sorry I am for what you’ve all been through these past few months,” Abel said in a statement that was read to the judge, the paper reported. “It could have ended so much worse than it did if you’d carried out the plans you had for me.”
The Herald reported that Martin and Underwood had planned to kill her.
“I’ve asked why so many times and yet haven’t been able to be given an acceptable answer,” she said, according to the paper. “Behave yourself in prison and maybe some day you will have a good life.”
Martin turned 17 after the kidnapping. Underwood is 16. They were charged as adults, according to the Oregonian.
A third co-defendant, a 14-year-old girl, was ordered to serve as much as 2 ½ years in a juvenile facility, the paper reported. She is appealing.
Martin and Underwood had pleaded guilty to charges of kidnapping, burglary and theft of a motor vehicle.
The Herald reported that at the sentencing prosecutors urged a 14-year prison sentence for each one, while saying that Martin had targeted his great-grandmother as an “easy mark.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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