The first of four Baltimore-area men to be sentenced for a violent kidnapping plot carried out while dressed as police officers received 15 years in federal prison Thursday.

Davonne T. Dorsey, 31, agreed to the sentence as part of a plea agreement reached with prosecutors this year. He was accused of participating in the kidnappings of a carjacking victim and an employee of a check-cashing business.

“These are terrible crimes,” U.S. District Judge Brendan A. Hurson said in court. “I heard from the victims firsthand about what they went through, and it was tough to hear.”

Hurson sentenced Dorsey to 10 years in prison for the carjacking charge and 5 years in prison for the gun charge, to be served consecutively.

The group carjacked a man in May 2021 after using police-style lights to get him to pull over his vehicle on a road in Harford County’s Edgewood, according to Dorsey’s plea agreement. The attackers also were wearing vests with “police” written on them, masks and gloves, prosecutors said. The men put the victim in handcuffs, duct taped his eyes and mouth, and drove him around for more than five hours.

The carjackers demanded $10,000, told the man they would kill his parents if he did not cooperate, and then burned his chest with a blowtorch multiple times before releasing him in Baltimore City, prosecutors wrote.

Another kidnapping victim, a woman, worked at a check-cashing business in Cockeysville when two of the men approached her wearing police-style vests and carrying guns on Aug. 2, 2021, according to the plea agreement. The men forced the woman into their vehicle, where they and a third man bound her wrists with zip ties and blindfolded her.

The group drove the woman around for six hours, demanding safe codes for the business and money, before releasing her around 1 a.m. in Baltimore City.

Dorsey pleaded guilty to involvement in two kidnappings. The other defendants also were accused in a third, also involving an employee at a check-cashing business, in May 2021. That woman was burned with a blow torch when she could not provide the safe combinations for the business, prosecutors wrote.

Dorsey, who lived in Baltimore County’s Gwynn Oak, did not speak at his sentencing hearing. He has no prior criminal convictions and support from family, including his young daughter, Hurson said.

“I don’t know what happened here that you ended up in this situation,” the judge said. “I have a strong feeling it’s in the past. I just hope that you can get through this and get out and be the father that I know you want to be.”

A second man who pleaded guilty in the case, Franklin J. Smith, is set to be sentenced Friday. The two other defendants, Dennis A. Hairston and Donte D. Stanley, were convicted of kidnapping, carjacking and other serious charges at a trial in June. Both men will be sentenced in November.