The second suspect in a May kidnapping case where two men allegedly held the victim at gunpoint in Chehalis and forced him to drive toward Portland was arrested Tuesday.
Isaiah Michael McCalmant, 26, of Grand Mound, was booked into the Lewis County Jail at approximately 9:40 a.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 5, after the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office arrested him on a $50,000 warrant for second-degree assault, second-degree kidnapping, first-degree attempted robbery, felony harassment and attempted theft of a motor vehicle charges.
McCalmant and his co-defendant, James B. Hobbs-Fletcher, 29, of Portland, Oregon, are accused of getting into the victim’s car at the park-and-ride off Exit 77 of Interstate 5 in Chehalis on May 17 under the premise of asking him to drive them to Walmart, then pulling a gun on the driver and ordering him to drive them to Portland or get out of the car, according to court documents.
The victim reportedly chose to stay in the car and continued driving until law enforcement disabled the vehicle in Cowlitz County. McCalmant allegedly got out of the vehicle before law enforcement stopped it and evaded capture.
Detectives with the Centralia Police Department reportedly identified McCalmant as the second suspect via photo montages with a witness and the victim after Hobbs-Fletcher was arrested, according to court documents. Charges were filed in Lewis County Superior Court on June 14.
“We’ve been searching for this defendant for a while,” Deputy Prosecutor Scott Jackson said of McCalamant during a preliminary hearing in Lewis County Superior Court on Wednesday, where he asked Judge Joely Yeager to set bail at $100,000.
“We believe that he is a flight risk as well as a danger to the community,” McCalamant said.
Yeager granted Jackson’s bail request and scheduled an arraignment hearing for Thursday, Sept. 12.
Hobbs-Fletcher’s case was filed in Lewis County Superior Court on May 18. He entered guilty pleas to first-degree robbery, second-degree kidnapping and theft of a motor vehicle on July 24 and was sentenced to 10 years in prison followed by 18 months of community custody.
