The suspect, Melvin Floyd, 22, of Atlanta was returned to Cherokee County from Alabama on Thursday to face charges of kidnapping with serious bodily injury, aggravated assault, and battery, according to investigators.
Floyd was arrested Sunday in Alabama after police there pulled over the car he was driving and found a beaten man in his trunk, according to a release from Lt. Jay Baker of the Cherokee Sheriff’s Office.
The man was identified as Lyndon Baines Smith, a 46-year-old man from Gadsden, Ala., who had driven to Canton to visit some family members.
Investigators say they do not have a motive in the beating.
Smith was visiting his teen son and a former girlfriend in the BridgeMill community when he was jumped by several individuals and allegedly beaten at the residence at 4140 Gold Mill Ridge in Canton before being placed in the trunk of his own car.
After police rescued Smith, who they said was barely alive, the victim was transported to a local hospital in Alabama where he was treated for multiple facial and rib fractures, Baker said.
“He was jumped by as many as four people and the next thing he knew he woke up in the hospital in Alabama,” said Maj. Ron Hunton, head of criminal investigations for the sheriff’s office.
Both the teen son and the man’s former girlfriend have not been located since the beaten man was rescued, Hunton said, and authorities are on the look-out for the pair, who is wanted for questioning.
Floyd was reportedly heading west on Interstate 20 around 4 p.m. Sunday when Cleburne County Deputy Lance Willingham pulled the vehicle over for a routine traffic stop.
According to authorities in Alabama, Floyd’s body language and his inability to identify the car’s owner led the deputy to search the vehicle. In the trunk of the car, he found Smith barely alive.
The victim was airlifted to University of Alabama Birmingham Hospital in Birmingham, Ala.
On Tuesday, Smith had been listed in serious but stable condition, according to police there.
The gold-colored 2004 Mercury Sable in which the victim was found was processed for fingerprints. Cherokee County law enforcement officials were hoping fingerprints on the trunk would help lead them to additional arrests and a possible motive.
Floyd is being held without bond in the Cherokee County Adult Detention Center.
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