D.C. Woman Sentenced to 102 Months for Kidnapping Two Women Lured by Fake Babysitting Job
A federal court in Washington, D.C., has sentenced Cierra Charity Lee, 21, of the District of Columbia, to 102 months in federal prison for luring two women to a residence with the promise of a babysitting job and taking part in their kidnapping and armed robbery, in an attempt to keep one of them from testifying in a rape case.
According to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia, Lee pleaded guilty on April 30, 2026, to kidnapping and armed robbery. Judge Christopher R. Cooper also ordered her to serve five years of supervised release after the prison term; prosecutors had sought a 168-month sentence. Her co-defendants, Robynn Danielle Bynum, 19, and Kayvon Edwards, 22, previously pleaded guilty to the same charges. Bynum is scheduled to be sentenced on January 21, 2027, and sentencing for Edwards is pending.
According to court documents, on the night of October 20, 2025, the two victims arrived at a residence near Suitland Parkway and Stanton Road SE after Lee offered to hire them for a babysitting job. In the basement, Bynum stabbed the first victim repeatedly in the back and injured the second victim as she tried to intervene, while Lee helped restrain both women, binding their hands and taking their phones, car keys and other property.
While the victims remained bound in a bathroom, Lee questioned the first victim about a pending rape case against her boyfriend, Edwards. Through monitored jail calls, investigators determined that Edwards, then incarcerated in Prince George's County, had orchestrated the attack to prevent the victim from testifying, and that Lee had assured him the victim would drop the charges and not appear in court. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro said the attack was a calculated ambush engineered to silence a rape victim and bury the truth, and that intimidation will never triumph over accountability.
Lee and Bynum then forced the victims into the first victim's car, taped their eyes and tried to drive them out of the District to abandon them in Pennsylvania. After the car struck something and a tire went flat, the two fled, leaving the victims bound and injured; the victims freed themselves and sought help. The first victim was treated for multiple stab wounds requiring trauma-level care, and the second for lacerations to her wrist and elbow. Police arrested all three defendants on November 5, 2025, and found searches about kidnapping penalties in Lee's phone history from before and after the attack.
The case was investigated by the FBI's Washington Field Office and the Metropolitan Police Department and is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Joshua Satter.
(Source: U.S. Department of Justice)
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：位于华盛顿的美国司法部罗伯特·肯尼迪大楼全景。APK，CC BY 4.0。 / Photo: Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building in Washington. APK, CC BY 4.0.
