Oliveira charged in Clifton Park kidnapping

PHOTOGRAPHER: Shutterstock Image

Gustavo Oliveira, 9, and Nivaldo P. Oliveira, 41

CLIFTON PARK — A dozen criminal charges, including felony kidnapping and burglary, have been filed against the man accused of kidnapping his son from a suburban Clifton Park home early Friday morning, state police said on Saturday.

Nivaldo P. Oliveira, 41, who gave police a Clifton Park address, is charged with second-degree kidnapping, first- and second-degree burglary, felony criminal mischief and misdemeanor counts of criminal mischief, menacing, possession of a weapon, petty larceny, and endangering the welfare of a child, police said. He was jailed with a high bail.

The criminal mischief charges include one related to preventing an emergency call, police said.

State police also released significant new details about events that led up to the alleged abduction of his son, nine-year-old Gustavo Oliveira, from Tallow Wood Drive in Clifton Park. Police said that incident occurred about 1 a.m. on Friday.

The alleged kidnapping led to the issuing of an Amber Alert for the child’s safety at 4:24 a.m. Friday, and day-long high-profile media coverage and police search that ended around 9 p.m. Friday, when a resident reported the two walking down Ontario Street in the city of Albany. Albany police took the father into custody after brief resistance, and the child has been safely reunited with his mother.

In new details released Saturday, state police said Oliveira had gone to an apartment at the Twin Lakes Apartments in Halfmoon shortly after midnight, where he threatened a woman with a six-year-old child, who hid from him and later escaped.

In a narrative, state police said troopers from the Clifton Park barracks responded to a disturbance at Twin Lakes just after midnight. There, they said they found a woman who had taken refuge in a vacant apartment near her residence following a domestic dispute. The investigation determined the woman and six-year-old had been at home when Oliveira forced his way in by breaking a downstairs window.

They said the woman and child barricaded themselves in a bedroom, but Oliveira broke down the door and chased the woman, “menacing her with a hammer.” The woman jumped from a second-floor window and injured her ankle, but was able to get to the vacant apartment and hide. The six-year-old was not harmed, and Oliveira left.

After that incident, Oliveira went to a relative’s home on Tallow Wood Drive where he knew Gustavo was staying, forced his way in, and took Gustavo by force, police said.

After being taken into custody, Oliveira was treated at Albany Medical Center for minor injuries sustained while attempting to avoid being apprehended. He has been arraigned in Halfmoon Town Court on the five felony charges, where bail was set at $210,000 cash, $420,000 secured bond, or $630,000 unsecured bond, police said. He will be arraigned later on the seven misdemeanor charges.

The Amber Alert received heightened attention in part because Nivaldo Oliveira has shown a pattern of threatening conduct.

“The child was taken under circumstances that led police to believe that they are in imminent danger of serious bodily harm and/or death,” a state police Facebook posting on Friday read.

The abduction came three months after Nivaldo Oliveira was accused of breaking into his estranged wife’s apartment in Halfmoon while she and a child hid in an upstairs bathroom and called police, records show.

Oliveira was charged with felony burglary in the earlier case, arraigned and released on his own recognizance, local court officials said Friday. He failed to show up for court two weeks later and a warrant has been out for him since, court officials said.

That incident occurred on Feb. 9. However, just eight days earlier, Oliveira was charged with misdemeanor trespass and child endangerment based on similar accusations, according to allegations filed in court for that case.

Reach staff writer Stephen Williams at 518-395-3086, [email protected] or @gazettesteve on Twitter.