- Reporters spoke to a local Arizona man, identified only as Carlos, after he had been detained and released by law enforcement.
- Carlos described the traffic stop that led to his questioning.
- Law enforcement told him he was being detained for kidnapping, but he said he was unfamiliar with Nancy Guthrie, Today host Savannah Guthrie’s mother, who had been missing for 10 days.
An Arizona man who was detained by authorities in the kidnapping case of Today anchor Savannah Guthrie‘s mother, Nancy, says he had never heard of her before being brought in.
“My wife was driving. We pulled over ’cause they were following me,” a man identified only as Carlos told ABC15 Arizona in a video the outlet posted Wednesday to Facebook. “And once I saw they were following me, I pulled over. They didn’t have to [make] a traffic stop or anything. I got out of the car, and they arrested me as soon as I got out of the car.”
Carlos said that he was unsure of what was happening at the time.
“They didn’t even tell me what was going on until the detectives got here like two hours before I got arrested. And then, the detectives got here, it was the FBI agent and Santa Cruz County,” he said. “They told me I was being detained for kidnapping. And I asked them, ‘Kidnapping of who?’ And they gave me this lady, I don’t know her name.”
When the interviewer asked if it had been Nancy Guthrie, the former suspect said yes. But it was a name that he’d “never heard until today,” he said.
He recalled telling authorities that it was possible he encountered the 84-year-old in his job with a courier service.
Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter.
“I told them, I work in Tucson for GLS. If she ordered something from GLS, I might have delivered a package to her house, but I never kidnapped anybody,” he said in a dark parking lot where the reporter had approached him. “They were holding me from like 4 to right now.”
Carlos initially declined to answer the question of whether he had anything to tell them and began heading away from the camera crew, but he eventually turned around.”
“I was arrested for kidnapping,” he said. “I didn’t do it.”
When the reporter explained that authorities had announced that they’d detained a person of interest, he asked how Carlos felt.
“I’m not happy. I’m glad they’re doing their job, but they’re chasing the wrong person,” Carlos said. “They should be chasing other leads.”
In a video interview posted Tuesday, Carlos told CBS News outside his home that he was never questioned.
Savannah Guthrie/Instagram
Carlos was released early Wednesday, according to the New York Times. The outlet reported that law enforcement authorities stopped him in Rio Rico, Ariz., and that they also searched the home where he lives with his wife and mother-in-law.
The search for Nancy Guthrie began Feb. 1, after a church friend noticed she was not there. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos later said that he suspected she had been abducted because of the crime scene and the fact that she had limited mobility.
Her three children have made multiple public pleas to anyone responsible for her disappearance. The FBI is also offering a $50,000 reward for information that leads to the recovery of Nancy Guthrie or the arrest and conviction of anyone involved in her disappearance.