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Kelowna  

Still looking for kidnappers

The one man who's been arrested and charged in last week's Interior-spanning kidnapping incident remains in custody, as police continue to search for others involved.

Justin Daniels was arrested in Kelowna on Feb. 14 and charged with robbery with a firearm and illegally confining five people.

The charges stem from a Kamloops robbery on Valentine's Day morning. Police said after the three people were robbed at gunpoint, the two men with guns kidnapped the female victim in one of the other victim's cars.

The investigation led police to a home on Dallas Drive in Kamloops, but police found the home ransacked, with no one inside.

The stolen car was later found near Barnhartvale Road and Highway 97.

Later that day, officers, along with the Southeast District Emergency Response Team, converged on the Okanagan Manor apartment building on the 1100 block of Kelowna's Bernard Avenue, where Daniels was arrested. The kidnapped woman was not found at the building.

Early the next morning, police learned the woman was being taken back to Kamloops. Officers intercepted a car near Falkland and found the woman uninjured inside. A man and woman in the car were arrested and guns were seized.

On Friday, the Kamloops RCMP said they were still looking to identify the second suspect involved in the robbery, but in a news release Tuesday, police say they are now looking to identify multiple additional suspects. Cpl. Jodi Shelkie said they will not provide any information about their continued search, or say how many people they are still looking for.

Daniels made a brief appearance in Kelowna court Friday, and he's scheduled to appear again on Feb. 28.

While police have only provided information about the kidnapping of the one woman, Daniels is charged with illegally confining five people. Cpl. Shelkie could not explain how the other four were involved, but police say all the people involved, including the victims, are participants in the Kamloops drug trade.

It's unclear if charges have been laid against the man and woman arrested in Falkland.

The kidnapping incident is one of several violent crimes, including a murder, that swept across Kamloops in recent weeks. Police say the violence is linked to the local drug trade and is fuelled by organized crime.



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