Oklahoma Man Sentenced for Kidnapping and Robbery

Carey L. Breshers, 52, of Oklahoma, was sentenced on February 6, 2012, to 293 months’ imprisonment on each of two counts of kidnapping, and 240 months’ imprisonment for interference with commerce by robbery, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois, Stephen R. Wigginton, announced today. Breshers was also sentenced to five years’ supervised release to follow imprisonment, a $300 special assessment, and ordered to make restitution in the amount of $44,618.50. The terms of imprisonment were ordered to run concurrently with each other, but consecutively to a sentence of 121 months’ imprisonment imposed on Breshers by a federal district court in Kansas, for a total sentence of 24 years and five months.

According to court documents, on October 26, 2010, at around 10:00 a.m., Breshers walked into World Finance in O’Fallon, Illinois, and held two female employees at gunpoint while questioning them about their personal checking accounts, finances, and vehicles, as well as the location of the bank for the business. He eventually made one of the employees write a company check for $3,000. Breshers then told the women to leave their cell phones, lock the business, and come with him. He directed one of the employees to drive her car and forced the other to get in the backseat with him.

Breshers directed the women to attempt to cash the check at the O’Fallon branch of Regions Bank. After two unsuccessful attempts to cash the check, Breshers ordered the women back to World Finance, where he took $1,104 from the business. Breshers then forced the employees to drive him to St. Louis. During the drive, Breshers removed the firearm from his pocket and fiddled with it. He told the women that he had committed a similar crime in Oklahoma, and that he had safely released the victim in that situation. Breshers made the women take the exit at I-44 and Jefferson, and drive around the back of an abandoned building, where he released them. He left in the employee’s car which was later found at a Metro Link station in Missouri. Breshers was arrested on October 31, 2010, in Topeka, Kansas, after committing the federal offense of interference with commerce by robbery, and found to be in possession of the firearm used in the kidnappings and robbery in the Southern District of Illinois. He has been in custody since his Kansas arrest.

The case was investigated by the O’Fallon Police Department, the FBI, and the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. The case is being handled by Assistant United States Attorney Kit Morrissey.