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WEST JORDAN — A man accused of holding a woman captive for nearly a month has been arrested by West Jordan police.
Albert Tony Yazzie, 29, of West Jordan, who was recently paroled from the Utah State Prison, was arrested Wednesday for investigation of kidnapping a victim for substantial time, damaging a phone, aggravated assault and failing to stop at the command of a law enforcer.
The woman, who used to be in a relationship with Yazzie, told police that Yazzie detained her in his residence for more than 25 days, “restricting her movements, activities, and communication to others outside the residence, restricted her bathroom use, shower use, and food consumption,” according to a Salt Lake County Jail booking affidavit.
The woman also claimed she was abused while being held captive, and was “hit with an open hand, spanked, choked and made to hit herself when the suspect determined she had misbehaved,” the affidavit states.
Yazzie also took the woman’s phone so she could not call her family or friends.
The affidavit does not say how the woman escaped, but states she was able to contact police on Wednesday. When officers attempted to talk to Yazzie at his home, he ran, according to the affidavit. Pursuing officers were forced to use a Taser to take him into custody.
Yazzie has a history of assaulting women, according to court records, and has been charged with unlawful detention in the past. In 2016 he was charged with several counts of aggravated assault for an alleged domestic violence incident. But the case was dismissed after a key witness did not show up to testify, according to court records.
In 2015 he was sentenced to up to five years the Utah State Prison on a theft conviction, court records state. He was sentenced to up to another five years in prison for witness tampering in 2018, which a judge ordered to run concurrently to another case, court records state.
Most recently he was paroled in September, according to the Department of Corrections.
Yazzie is related to Patrick Raymond Yazzie, 54, of West Jordan, who has been arrested for allegations of committing similar crimes and at one time lived in the same house as Albert Yazzie. He has been on either probation or parole with the Utah Department of Corrections, or incarcerated in the Utah State Prison, since 1985.
In 2015, Patrick Yazzie was charged in 3rd District Court with aggravated kidnapping and rape, first-degree felonies, and two counts of aggravated assault, a third-degree felony, after allegedly detaining and beating a woman in his house for three days. He pleaded no contest in that case in 2016 to an amended charge of attempted aggravated assault resulting in serious injury and was sentenced to up to five years in the Utah State Prison.
Yazzie has been incarcerated at the prison since 2015.
He was also charged with rape and forcible sodomy in a separate case in 2014. But the case was dismissed after a key witness failed to show up for the preliminary hearing, according to court records. The same thing happened in another 2014 case when Yazzie again faced charges of aggravated kidnapping and assault charges. Prosecutors were forced to dismiss the charges because of problems with witnesses.
