A week after an Oakland man was accused of trying to abduct a toddler from a Muni bus, prosecutors have revealed that the suspect has multiple kidnapping and domestic violence charges in his recent past.
It's likely you remember the chilling tale: It was Tuesday, November 17 when a mother and her then 1-year-old baby boarded a Muni bus on Sansome Street near Washington Street
According to San Francisco Police Department spokesperson Sergeant Michael Andraychak, the mom was waiting for the driver to hand her a transfer when a man entered the bus and "forcibly took" the child from the mother.
The man, still "holding her crying son," hopped off the bus and headed north on Sansome, Andraychak says. "The mother screamed and quickly exited the bus, confronting the man and pulling her son from his grasp," Andraychak says.
After that traumatic experience, the woman simply "re-boarded the bus so that she could continue on to her intended destination," Andraychak says, noting that "the child appeared to be physically unharmed."
According to Andraychak, neither the woman nor her child knew the man.
That night, when the child's aunt heard about the attempted abduction, she contacted police. After officers from SFPD's Special Victims Unit (SVU) watched the Muni video footage of the event, they were able to identify the suspect as 45-year old Sudesh Singh of Oakland, because around the time of the incident, Singh had been detained by officers from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on that same block of Sansome for acting suspiciously, Andraychak says. According to the Chron, Singh's allegedly strange behavior went down at the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services office, but "It was not immediately clear why he was let go" following his Homeland detention.
On Friday the 20th, BART police spotted Singh at the SFO station and detained him on the spot. He was booked into San Francisco County Jail on felony kidnapping and child endangerment charges, and made his first court appearance Tuesday, where he pleaded not guilty.
According to Assistant District Attorney O’Bryan Kenney, Singh was on probation for a conviction in Alameda County at the time of the alleged child abduction, after what the Chron says was an August 2013 "false imprisonment and domestic violence [case] in connection with a woman in Hayward."
In February 2014, Singh was sentenced to five years probation for the felony false imprisonment charges. But that's not the end of his troubles: In March of this year, he had another false imprisonment conviction, this time for an attempted knifepoint kidnapping of a woman in South Lake Tahoe in November 2014. That one netted him a state prison sentence, the Chron reports.
It's unclear when Singh was released, but he'd been out long enough to enroll at Merritt College in Oakland and gain steady employment, Deputy Public Defender Mark Jacobs said.
According to the Chron, while in court "Singh attempted to speak to the judge several times but was instructed not to by his attorney." His bail was set at $500,000, and as of this morning he remains in custody, according to the San Francisco Sheriff's Department. He is expected to court on December 9.
Previously: Police Arrest Suspect Who Allegedly Snatched Toddler From Mother On Muni Bus