By Matt Zapotosky
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 5, 2008

A 24-year-old deliveryman was violently abducted Thursday after he walked into an apparent ambush behind a vacant apartment building in Fredericksburg, Va., police said yesterday.

Yong Hui Zhang, a driver for his parents' restaurant, China Express, had been dispatched to make three deliveries, including an order to the building in the 200 block of Charles Street, about 9:20 p.m., police said. When he didn't return to the restaurant by closing time, about an hour later, his parents called police.

At the apartment building, police found a "significant amount of blood" and a single shoe belonging to Zhang, said Natatia L. Bledsoe, public information officer for the Fredericksburg police. To get to the entrance of the vacant building, Zhang would have driven down an alley and parked in the back, she said.

"As an ambush, it's perfect," she said.

Police are searching for Zhang and his bronze 2004 Nissan Sentra. They are also looking for a man who used Zhang's credit card that night at the Four Mile Fork Shell station in Spotsylvania County. Investigators do not know the identity of the man but consider him a possible suspect, Bledsoe said.

Bledsoe said the abduction was "a real shock" for the city, which is about 50 miles south of the District. Although robbery of delivery drivers is common, she said, violent abductions are not. She said police do not think Zhang knew his abductor.

"We don't work very many of these, at all, in our jurisdiction," she said. "It is really strange, and of course, we are so concerned. We don't know what to think about his present circumstances."