Man arrested in connection with Collier County carjacking

Nessa Pathammavong says she was frozen in fear watching as 29-year-old Edmilson Martins and two other men robbed her and her coworkers at gunpoint.

“He was back there all blacked out with a mask on with a big rifle. It looked like an AK-47,” she said. “If you were going to kidnap somebody, that’s what it looked like, it looked like a movie.”

She says she and her coworkers at JTL Distributers met Martins at a 7-Eleven to sell him a $6,000 audio system earlier this year.

They exchanged numbers, and then five hours later, met up with Martins near the intersection of SR-82 and SR-29 so he could purchase the system. That’s when he allegedly robbed them.

“They were acting like normal people, and then they were like, “where is the money?” And they said, “where is the merchandise? They know we had it, they’ve seen it in the van already” and that’s when they brought out guns and tie straps,” Pathammavong said.

She says Martins and his friends got out of their truck and posed as undercover officers with zip ties and guns.

“When they came out, they said we’re undercover and in my head I’m like, we’re not doing anything illegal, so in my head I was like damn this is actually happening,” she said.

She says Martins then took their equipment, got in the front seat of their van and shot her 18-year-old coworker in the arm before driving away.

The victim’s sister tracked the GPS on her phone, and found the stolen van in March. From there, they linked fingerprints they found to Martin and arrested him Thursday.

But at least two other people involved in the crime are still on the run.