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MURRAY — Police arrested a man who they say kidnapped a woman by tying her up and threatening to kill her with a lethal dose of drugs.
Michael Lee Curwick, 45, was booked into the Salt Lake County Jail Friday for investigation of aggravated kidnapping, aggravated assault, criminal conspiracy and drug possession.
While West Valley police were serving a drug search warrant at a Murray house Friday, they reported discovering a woman bound with duct tape in a bedroom. The woman, 27, told police she had been staying with a man she knew as "Irish" for two or three days and when she returned Friday morning, he accused her of stealing from him.
She denied stealing anything, but the man "told her that she was not allowed to leave and threatened to kill her multiple times with a 'hotshot,' which (she) described as a syringe full of drugs that would ultimately cause her to overdose and die," according to a police booking affidavit.
Irish made the cocktail in the bathroom and brought it into the bedroom where she was told to stay, the affidavit states. Police said they found drug paraphernalia and the hotshots the victim described while executing the warrant.
The woman said the man repeatedly told her "that he was going to inject her with the hotshot and bury her in the Salt Flats with three other girls after he had killed her" and even made a phone call about getting a van to pick up her body, according to the affidavit.
Police say the woman was punched, slapped and kicked during the ordeal and may have suffered a broken rib. The man allegedly cut off the woman's hair as well. She was taken to a hospital to be treated.
The affidavit describes Curwick as "a known drug user and drug dealer with a violent criminal history, including 15 years in federal prison."
