Deputies from the Stafford County Sheriff's Office in Virginia were called to Mr. B's. on Warrenton Road in Stafford just before midnight Feb. 24, where a man later identified as Gucci Horvath, 36, was fixing a flat tire, police said.
The person helping him had called police saying the child with Horvath looked almost identical to a juvenile from a Wisconsin Amber Alert.
Considering the child did look similar to the missing child, First Sergeant A.I. Assur and Sergeant B.U. Demirci contacted numerous law enforcement agencies to gather more information while Deputy Baldi and Deputy C.R. Szentkuti tried to identify Horvath.
Horvath had no identifying information and gave police a name that would later be determined to be false. Later, deputies would hear the suspect on the phone make statements that he was “on the run” and he “shot somebody," the sheriff's office said in a release.
Due to the concerning statements, Horvath was detained until that information could be confirmed.
Through their investigation, the child was discovered to not be the missing Wisconsin child, but a relative of Horvath's. Police then determined Horvath had been wanted out of Essex County, NJ for assault charges with full extradition.
Court records show Horvath was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in May 2022.
In Virginia, he was charged with fugitive from justice, as well as, providing a false identity to law enforcement. He was held at Rappahannock Regional Jail without bond while First Sergeant Assur, with the help of Child Protective Services, made contact with the child’s grandmother so she could retrieve the child.
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