Few details revealed on arrests at motel
By Jack Stephens
Published in News on August 27, 2004 2:04 PM
Law-enforcement officials have not released any further information on five men arrested during a raid of a Goldsboro motel.
One of the five men arrested Thursday at a Goldsboro motel was believed to have been wanted for numerous murders in Mexico, said Wayne County Sheriff Carey Winders.
But today a source close to the investigation said that information was wrong. The source said that a further investigation had determined that the man was not the one that was wanted for those crimes.
The men have not been identified by federal authorities who swooped into Goldsboro on Wednesday night, staked out the Best Western Goldsboro Inn, evacuated the guests and then arrested the five without force.
A spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation said today that the men could not be identified because it was an ongoing investigation and more people might be arrested later.
Kevin B. Kendrick, the special agent in charge of the Charlotte FBI office, said Wednesday that the men were wanted as part of a pending immigration investigation.
"They didn't tell us much," Winders said today of federal authorities, "except that they wanted them bad."
The sheriff said he was notified of the raid two days earlier. Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and federal marshals met with local authorities at about 8 p.m. Wednesday to set up the raid.
Three men were found in one room and two others in another room on the second floor. With raised guns and protected by shields, officers called the five men out from their rooms.
"They may have set up surveillance before that," Winders said. "They also wanted help from us."
Sheriff's detectives and deputies and Goldsboro-Wayne County Drug Squad officers assisted in the raid.
The entire raid was kept quiet until it was completed. Winders said high-ranking officers and dispatchers knew little about it.
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