Homecoming party on hold for woman held in Honduran jail
Just a few hours after Amanda LaRoque and her husband, Brandon, booked their one-way tickets home from Honduras to Raleigh-Durham International Airport, they hit another road block.
Stay on top of breaking news stories with the ABC11 News App
Friday night, Brandon LaRoque said their attorney, Jose Maria Castillo, showed up at the office of Routan Assistant District Attorney Belkis Fabiola De Diego Marquez at 4:01 p.m. local time but said the office closed at 4 p.m.
He went there to get Amanda LaRoque's passport so she could catch her flight home Saturday. The attorney said he was then told the ADA took Monday and Tuesday off so LaRoque's passport will not be available those days either.
PREVIOUS STORY: Charges dropped, but Raleigh woman can't leave
Brandon LaRoque said he and his wife thought this was past them, they were celebrating and they haven't wrapped their minds around this latest move.
"I don't know what their goal is," Brandon LaRoque told ABC11 on Friday night. "I don't even know what to say right now."
Their attorney said the ADA said she plans to appeal the court's dismissal of LaRoque's charges, even after LaRoque leaves the country.
On appeal, she will ask for what's called a probational dismissal, which allows five years to continue investigating whether the substance found in the "safe-can" is a precursor that can be used to make drugs.
Should she win that appeal and the investigation leads to charges, then they would try to issue an international warrant.
Castillo said the ADA will use the items confiscated as evidence in the appeal along with the "safe-can," LaRoque's suitcase and her original plane tickets, so LaRoque can't get those items back before she leaves.
"We thought this whole thing had escalated and then cooled down and starting to calm down again, and now it's escalating again," Brandon LaRoque said, "and I'm, it's, I don't know what the purpose of this is. I know she's not in a jail cell, but she's a hostage in a foreign country.
"It's like they're trying to break us," he added.
Castillo still said he feels certain he will get her passport back Wednesday.
On the brighter side, Brandon LaRoque said many in Honduras have reached out to the couple.
"Lots of places around here have been awesome, they offered to comp us rooms, to stay here for free and it's not about that, we need to get on with our lives," he said. "We didn't plan on taking what I guess some people would call a three-week vacation and yeah, I can leave, but I'm not leaving my wife in a foreign country because now that this has been pulled, I'm not sure if anything else is going to be pulled."
Barring anything else being "pulled" the LaRoques should be back in Raleigh by Thursday at the latest.
