A 27-year-old Mission man has been sentenced to nearly two decades in federal prison for taking hostages and participating in a violent crime involving drugs and a machine gun.
U.S. District Judge Randy Crane sentenced Ricardo Serna Wednesday to a little more than 18 years in the Bureau of Prisons on the hostage-taking charge and roughly five years for the violent crime charge.
The sentences will run concurrent, court records indicate.
Serna pleaded guilty to those charges Jan. 11.
Federal prosecutors, through an oral motion, asked Crane during the sentencing hearing to dismiss two counts of kidnapping against Serna, which the judge granted.
Palmview and Mission police initially arrested him May 11, 2019, on charges of aggravated kidnapping and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
He is accused of beating and shooting a man with an AK-47 on May 6, 2019.
Serna was later indicted on charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and attempted murder. This case is still open and has been on hold since he was taken into custody by federal authorities on Sept. 24, 2019, after he, along with 11 other people, were indicted by federal authorities for operating a kidnapping ring.
The charges he pleaded guilty to indicate he and others conspired to seize, detain and threaten two men in order to compel a third person to pay money for their release and used a firearm during the commission of that crime over a two-day period in May 2019.
The two kidnapping victims in the federal case are different then the alleged kidnapping victim in the state case.
All of the people publicly named in the indictment, which is still redacted, have been sentenced in the case.
As for the state charges, Serna is accused of holding a man against his will in the 1000 block of Ricardo Avenue in Palmview and shooting him in the leg three times with an AK-47.
A probable cause affidavit for his arrest alleges the man knocked on Serna’s door that day and that Serna pointed the weapon at him while his father, Rodrigo, 56, hit him with a beer bottle.
Serna’s father was also indicted on a charge of attempted murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. However, he died at his home from heart disease Aug. 16 and the Hidalgo County District Attorney’s Office dismissed the charges against him.
The father and son, however, told investigators that the alleged kidnapping victim had come to their house to rob them, but those investigators allege the Sernas owed the man money and had arrived that day looking to collect, according to the complaint.
Ricardo Serna has not yet been arraigned on the indictment because he has remained in federal custody since Sept. 24, 2019.
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