Hip replacement helps identify burned body in trunk, feds say. Woman prison-bound

A woman is facing prison time after pleading guilty to the role she played in the 2019 kidnapping of a man in New Mexico, federal officials said.kid

In July 2019, Kendra Panteah, 37, was driving with the victim and others in his car to buy beer, according to the plea agreement.

When they were driving home, the victim grabbed the steering wheel — “almost rolling the car” — leading the other passengers to get out and beat him up before stuffing him in the trunk, the document said.

The woman said she would have driven the man back to his home or to her own home, but got “scared,” so she called her co-defendant, Gilbert John Jr., the document stated.

Panteah and John drove around for over a day with the victim in the trunk before stopping, according to an Oct. 29 news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

That’s when the man tried escaping, but John stabbed him with a machete, prosecutors said.

Panteah was sitting in the car when she heard the two men “yelling” before hearing “something that sounded like someone taking their last breath,” the document said.

Eventually, Panteah and John sat on the trunk until they heard the victim stop moving, officials said.

The man died from the stab wounds and John doused his body in gasoline before setting the car on fire, the release said.

The victim was identified by a hip replacement found among the burned remains, officials said.

John pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 21 years in prison, prosecutors said.

Panteah, who pleaded guilty to one count of kidnapping, is facing between 10 to 18 years in prison, officials said.

“I strongly believe that this tragedy would not have occurred had everyone involved been sober. Ms. Panteah is a kind and gentle woman who has struggled with substance abuse. In fact, she was laboring under the effects of that deep addiction when she found herself involved in the charged offense,” Panteah’s lawyer, Erlinda Ocampo Johnson, told McClatchy News in a statement.

After being released, she will be subject to up to five years of supervised release.