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Superior Court Judge Patrick Roma also ordered Freddie Santiago held in the Bergen County Jail for 30 days to continue needed physical therapy for a broken shoulder before beginning his five-year prison term for two convictions of child endangerment.
Santiago’s public defender, Seth Victor (above, right), asked Roma to delay sentencing yesterday for the treatment.
The judge refused, saying the case had already been postponed from January. He instead made the accommodation to allow Santiago to finish his therapy.
“The [Bergen County] Sheriff’s Department does a wonderful job,” Roma said, adding that it was the first time he’d isssued such a ruling.
(STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter).
Prosecutors originally charged Santiago and his brother, Kevin, with kidnapping. Both agreed to plead guilty to lesser charges, which would have put Freddie in prison for seven years.
Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Natalie Candela argued for keeping his deal intact.
Kevin Santiago, r., attorney Bruce Klein (STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter)
“For all the thousand ways this could have been better, this was beyond being bad judgment,” Candela said. “You don’t teach someone not to bully by bullying them.”
The boy’s mother said her son is so traumatized that she is selling her house and moving out of Teaneck. He also remains in therary, she said.
“He wanted me to get a gun,” she said. “He was sleeping with a knife under his pillow. I’m getting out of Teaneck.
“He has outbursts, he’s not doing well in school, and he can’t focus. He’s a good kid. My son is definitely not in a gang. I didn’t know khakis meant you were in a gang. I was trying to get him not to wear jeans all the time.”
Victor countered that the boy’s violent language made Santiago fear for his daughter’s safety.
“This case has bothered me for a long time,” Victor told the judge. “My client was concerned for his daughter. There was a slip in her grades, and he was concerned. When he looked at her text messages, he found things that made him fear for her safety.”
The boy “called her a ho. He said he’s using marijuana and wants to get her high,” the defense attorney said. “His language was racist, outrageous.”
The messages included a comment about bringing Bloods gang members to school to stab black youngsters, he said.
“I’m going to be a thug, I’m going for heads,” the 12-year-old texted.
“To be fair, nothing happened with that,” Victor told the judge, “but that’s what my client read.
“Freddie grew up in the Bronx. He knows sometimes kids can do bad things.”
One day last January, Santiago followed the 12-year old boy home from school. The next, he brought his brother.
He then stopped the teen on Teaneck Road and forced him into his car. The two men got in the back seat with the boy while Santiago’s daughter cried hysterically in the front.
They went to the boy’s house, where they sat outside for half an hour, telling him what would happen if he followed through on any of his bragging.
Santiago apologized to the boy’s mother and family.
“My daughter is everything to me,” he said. “I raised her alone for nine years. Once I saw messages saying she was a ho, he’s a Blood member, he wants her to smoke marijuana, I went kind of crazy.
“I know I didn’t do everything by the book. I planned to scare him, and speak to his mother after that. I’m taking responsibility for what I did.”
The girl now lives in Florida with her mother, and the family no longer gets to see her, Santiago’s father said.
Kevin Santiago was sentenced to one year’s probation directly after his brother’s hearing.
His attorney, Bruce Klein, said Kevin Santiago was originally considered for pre-trial intervention because he wasn’t directly involved in the kidnapping act and, in fact, tried talking his brother out of it.
Klein said he also took an ice pick from Freddie and put it away.
The probation plea bargain was “a family decision,” Klein said.
(1. to r.): Freddie Santiago, public defender Seth Victor, Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Natalie Candela (STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter)
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