The bounty hunters told police they used an AI facial recognition tool and that the tool provided a 79% recognition match to the man they were looking for.
RICHARDSON, Texas — Three bounty hunters face kidnapping charges after mistaking a man for a suspect with a similar name and taking him into custody at a home in Richardson, police said.
Alan Hinton and Devon Allard Carter each face charges of aggravated kidnapping and execution of a capias or arrest warrant, according to a statement from Richardson police.
A third suspect also faces charges, but he has not been arrested yet, police said.
The incident unfolded on June 1 at a home in the 3800 block of Aberdeen Court in northeast Richardson, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.
The affidavit said the bounty hunters were searching for a capital murder suspect and believed they had tracked the man to a garage in Richardson, where he was giving a client a haircut. The bounty hunters told police they used an AI facial recognition tool and that the tool provided a 79% recognition match to the man they were looking for, the affidavit said.
The bounty hunters drove up to the home in a U-Haul van, threw a flash bang in the garage and arrested who they thought was the suspect, according to the affidavit.
But the man they snatched was not the suspect. The actual suspect, it turned out, had fled to Iraq, according to the affidavit.
The man the bounty hunters took into custody had an evading arrest charge “that is being sorted out,” the affidavit said, but he’s been checking in weekly with a bail bonds business in Garland. Also, the bail bonds business the victim is using is different than the one the bounty hunters were working for, according to the affidavit.
The man told police that he was cutting a client’s hair when he heard a flash bang go across his face and explode, the affidavit said. Then he heard people yelling at him to get down on the floor. They were armed with AR guns and were aiming them at his face, the affidavit said.
After the bounty hunters took the man away, they eventually let him out of the van and he waited for police to arrive.
Police ran the man’s name and found that he didn’t have any active warrants for his arrest and did not look like the capital murder suspect the bounty hunters were searching for, the affidavit said.
Hinton, one of the bounty hunters, told police they were working on a contract with a group out of Houston. They had body camera footage, which police reviewed. On the bounty hunters’ video, police could see the encounter unfold, including the flash bang that went off in the garage, the affidavit said.
When the bounty hunters took the victim from the garage and into the van, they drove away while asking him questions, the video showed. The victim told the bounty hunters they got the wrong person, the affidavit said.
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