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Two University of Virginia students snatched a man off a street corner in the Tysons Corner area, tied him up in a Falls Church motel bathroom and demanded a $500,000 ransom.

The kidnappers used the victim's cellphone to make their demands, and police were able to pinpoint the motel after AT&T provided an approximate location in Falls Church as the origin of the calls, court records show.

Fairfax County police and the FBI staked out a motel in that area and spotted two men going in and out of a room there. When an officer and an FBI agent knocked on the door, they were allowed into the room and found the victim bound and gagged with duct tape in the bathtub, a search warrant affidavit states.

Police charged Guanyu Lu, 19, and Baichuan Shu, 19, both of Charlottesville, with abduction with intent to extort money. Both were arraigned yesterday in Fairfax County General District Court and ordered held without bond.

The suspects were second-year engineering students at Virginia, university spokesman Jeff Hanna said. Both are Chinese nationals, as is their victim, a 20-year-old man who was living with a host family in McLean, Fairfax Officer Don Gotthardt said.

Someone called the victim's host family that night and demanded, in Chinese, $500,000 for the victim's life, Allen wrote. The caller also threatened to blow up the family's home if they contacted police, the affidavit states.

Gotthardt said:

"This is not a random crime. We think this particular victim was targeted."

Shu lives in an apartment on campus, and Lu lives off campus, said a friend of Shu's from U-Va. who also knew him in Shanghai and who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared reprisals:

"That's unbelievable. I couldn't imagine this kind of stuff would happen. He plays sports. He plays basketball. He has a lot of friends."

© 2007 The Washington Post Company, "Two U-Va. Students Charged in Kidnapping", by Tom Jackman, Washington Post Staff Writer, Tuesday, November 27, 2007.

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