CUSTODY BATTLE

Griffin Guo had been missing since July when he vanished on the Upper East Side of Manhattan during a court-scheduled visitation with his father. File Photo.

Kidnapped Boy Reunited with Mother

A 6-year old boy returned to the United States safely in the arms of his American mother after being kidnapped and taken to China by his father during a bitter custody battle.

“It’s been a long ordeal and we’re really glad it’s come to an end,” the mother, Camille Colvin, 33, told reporters at New York’s Kennedy International Airport after disembarking from a flight from Beijing.

Colvin reportedly paid $60,000 to the child’s father, her ex-husband, to be allowed to take him home.

The child, Griffin Guo, had been missing since July when he vanished from the Upper East Side of Manhattan during a court-scheduled visitation with his father. For weeks after their disappearance, Colvin scoured the streets of New York’s Chinatown armed with flyers with pictures of her son and his father, Rui (Grey) Guo, 39, a Chinese national. In fluent Mandarin, she fruitlessly pleaded with passersby for any information on their whearabouts. The FBI, meanwhile, issued an international arrest warrant for Guo.

Several weeks ago, after learning he and the child had returned to China, Colvin traveled there with her brother, Cal Elliot, 30, to search for Griffin. They finally found him and his father earlier this month at the home of relatives in Zhengzhou, Hunan Province.

After a stormy confrontation with the relatives, local police moved everyone to a suite in a nearby hotel and told them to negotiate a deal. During nine tense days, Colvin says, she was not allowed to leave the hotel and had to barricade herself and Griffin inside their room to keep Guo and his relatives from snatching the boy. Officials from the U.S. State Department intervened, and the dispute threatened to become an international incident, just on the eve of Chinese President Jiang Zemin’s visit to the United States next week.

Griffin is a U.S. citizen. Guo, an artist, and Colvin, an executive at PricewaterhouseCoopers, divorced in the United States last year. The mother has since remarried.

Guo said that because his son was born in China, and he and his wife were married in China, the custody issue should be decided under Chinese law.

The dispute was complicated by the fact that China is not a signatory to the Hague Convention or the International Parental Kidnapping Crime Act, which allow warrants in custody cases to be enforced overseas.

Colvin and Elliot told reporters that Guo finally agreed to let the boy leave the country with his mother in exchange for a payment of an undisclosed amount of money. Reuter’s news service, quoting a source close to the family, said the sum was $60,000. The deal, which Colvin and Elliot said was the only way to resolve the standoff, was brokered with help from U.S. diplomats and Chinese government officials, Reuters said.

— Heather Harlan, Special to AsianWeek

ILLEGALLY GROUNDED

South Asian Parents Arrested for Allegedly Keeping Daughter Prisoner

The parents of a 15-year-old girl were arrested after they allegedly kept her prisoner in their Queens, N.Y., home and did not allow her to attend school, police said.

Jaswant Kaur, 38, and Jit Singh, 44, are charged with endangering the welfare of a child and unlawful imprisonment. They told investigators that they kept their daughter, Pradhjit Kaur, at home because she was disobedient and had a history of psychological problems.

Pradhjit told police she escaped while her mother was taking a shower and approached a couple whom she did not know and asked them for help. They took her to a local police station.

Pradhjit’s parents withdrew her from William Bryant High School in April and allegedly lied to a school administrator, saying they were taking her out of school because the family was moving to New Jersey, prosecutors said at the couple’s arraignment.

A lawyer representing the Pradhjit’s mother told the court that the girl fabricated the charges in order to be with her 25-year-old boyfriend.

“I suspect that this girl wants to be with this guy all the time and can get mom and dad out of the picture by making these allegations,” said Scott Dufault, a lawyer representing Pradhjit’s mother, during the arraignment in Queens Criminal Court.

Kaur and Singh, who emigrated to the United States from Punjab, India in 1993, also have two sons, ages 12 and 14. Police said both attend school.

Officials at the Administration for Children’s Services said they had no complaints on record of any problems in the family.

— Heather Harlan, Special to AsianWeek

DELIVERY MURDER

Another Chinese Food Delivery Person Murdered in New York

A Chinese food deliveryman was fatally shot in Brooklyn after being lured to a phony address in an apparent robbery attempt, police said.

The victim, Jian Chun Lin, 36, was delivering $13 worth of food when he was allegedly ambushed by a group of youths who had phoned in the order.

Police arrested Shaniqua Brown, 19, Ernest Carroway, 16 and the alleged shooter, Antoine Belton, 22. They are charged with murder and attempted robbery.

Investigators believe the bungled robbery unfolded when Brown called the Happy House restaurant in Brownsville with an order of General Tso’s Chicken, hot wings and french fries and asked for it to be delivered to an apartment building two blocks away. When Lin arrived and rang the doorbell of the fourth floor apartment, the residents denied they had placed the order. Lin left and went down the stairs. When he got to the lobby, he was allegedly approached by Belton, who announced the robbery and demanded that he turn over the food. Lin then took out a small pocketknife and tried to defend himself, before being shot once in the chest by Belton, said police. Carroway allegedly served as a lookout.

Lin was later found by residents of the building lying in a pool of blood clutching the knife, with the bag of food beside him. He was taken to Brookdale University Hospital, where he died.

Police spokesperson Jerry Varsson said Lin was carrying $12. Although they left the food and cash behind, the group of assailants allegedly fled with the victim’s mountain bike.

Lin, an illegal immigrant from Fuzhou who had been in the United States for only one year, was the married father of two children. He lived with other workers above the restaurant, while saving money to bring his family over from China.

The slaying echoed a similar killing two years ago in Queens. In that incident, three teens phoned in an order to a Chinese restaurant, and then beat the deliveryman to death in order to steal his food. There have also been two other ambush slayings of Chinese food deliverymen in the city in the past four years.

Belton was arrested at his aunt’s house, a few blocks away from the murder scene. Police said the murder weapon, a .22 caliber revolver, was found at the home. Belton had been on parole after serving a jail sentence for a drug conviction. At the time of the murder, he had an arrest warrant against him for failing to meet with his parole officer.

— Heather Harlan, Special to AsianWeek