The things people do when it all goes wrong…
A Northern California man arrested after allegedly abducting his two children and trying to evade authorities by stealing a sailboat and sailing along the Northern California coast was being held on $200,000 bail, authorities said.
Christopher Maffei was booked on two counts of kidnapping, two counts of child endangerment and two counts of parental abduction after his arrest Friday, South San Francisco police Sgt. Bruce McPhillips said.
Maffei, 43, forcibly took his 3-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son from the their maternal grandmother, Jean Hipon, while the children’s mother, Jennifer Hipon, was in a Redwood City court on Tuesday seeking a restraining order against him, McPhillips said. Maffei is the former boyfriend of Jennifer Hipon.
"The mother was at the courthouse filing a restraining order at the time he took the children and the maternal grandmother attempted to stop him," McPhillips said.The FBI was notified once it was determined that Maffei had crossed county lines and stolen a boat in Alameda County, then the U.S. Coast Guard was called in once he sailed the boat to the coast, McPhillips said.
The Coast Guard and FBI began tracking the 40-foot sailboat Unleashed, which was sailed from a harbor in Alameda on Tuesday. Read on.
