A homeless man was arrested on kidnapping charges after he allegedly led a 4-year-old boy away from a prayer service at a Long Island mosque and barricaded the two of them in the basement, Suffolk County police said Thursday.
At around 5:45 p.m. Wednesday, a worshiper at Masjid Darul Quran of Bay Shore noticed Nelson Priester leading the boy away from the prayer hall and alerted the child’s grandfather, the Suffolk County Police Department said in a statement.
By then Priester, 39, had made it to a basement kitchen and barricaded the door.
“Multiple people then attempted to gain entry to the kitchen through the door but were unable,” police said. “One person then climbed through a service window into the kitchen to reach the child, who was not injured.”
Police charged Priester, who had no known address, with second-degree attempted kidnapping and with endangering the welfare of a child. Authorities did not speculate on a motive. Priester was scheduled to appear Thursday at First District Court in Central Islip.
Priester has had previous run-ins with the law, according to multiple reports. In 2022, he was arrested two days in a row, first on Jan. 13 for alleged third-degree criminal possession of stolen property, second-degree possession of a forged instrument, aggravated driving without a license, and other vehicle and traffic violations, the Long Island Press reported at the time. He was fitted for an ankle monitor and released the same day without bail.
The next day, Priester was pulled over in Garden City for failing to signal a lane change and turned out to be driving a stolen car, Nassau County police said. He was charged a second time with third-degree criminal possession of stolen property and driving without a license, plus unauthorized use of a vehicle and failure to signal. The final outcome of that case was not clear on Thursday.
In June 2023, Priester was charged with two counts of grand larceny for allegedly stripping flagpoles in front of several Riverhead, N.Y., businesses — after two weeks of mysterious flag thefts — and was caught red-handed with the flagpole hooks.
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