A Big Lake man pleaded guilty in Pope County District Court last Tuesday to a charge of kidnapping.   

A settlement conference took place for 22-year-old Beningo Alvarrez-Gutierrez who was charged with “Kidnapping and Depriving Another of Custody or Parental Rights” for a March 17 incident in which he allegedly entered the home of a rural Westport woman and took her 2-year-old child.   

Alvarrez-Gutierrez later abandoned the boy in the garage of a friend north of Paynesville, who found the child unharmed sitting in a booster seat.  In Court Tuesday, Alvarrez-Gutierrez pleaded guilty to the kidnapping charge and the Deprivation of Parental Rights charge was dropped.   He will be sentenced February 9, it was reported.