Jeanette Morris, Harold Anderson, Joan Hobart

Two women and a man are facing attempted murder charges after authorities say they shocked a Florida man with a stun gun and beat him before tying him to a truck's bumper and dragging him a half-mile down a road.

Jeannette Morris, 61, her brother, 63-year-old Harold Anderson, and 46-year-old Joan Hobart are also charged with aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit murder in the Tuesday incident in Samsula, Volusia County Sheriff's Office officials said.

Authorities say Morris, Anderson and Hobart were drinking vodka with Morris' ex-husband in the home she shares with him when the three attacked the ex-husband.

The 54-year-old ex-husband was shocked several times with the stun gun and repeatedly punched in the face and had a gun put to his head. He then had his hands tied behind his back and he was dragged outside, where his ankles were tied and the rope was attached to the rear bumper of a pickup truck, authorities said.

The man was dragged down the road before the truck stopped and he was tossed in the back. The trio cut off some of his hair and talked about scalping him and finding a hole in which to bury him, authorities said.

Miami police car bullet hole mystery

At one point, the man was able to break free and jump from the moving truck and ran to a nearby home to get help. Authorities say he showed up at the home beaten and bloody wearing only his torn underwear and ropes around his neck and wrist.

He was treated at the scene and later taken to a Daytona hospital's intensive surgical care unit with a broken pelvis, broken facial bones and bleeding in his brain.

Deputies found Morris who had dried blood on her clothes and hand but denied her involvement in the attack and said the blood came from breaking up a fight between dogs, authorities said.

Anderson was also found with a swollen right hand with cut and bloody knuckles, authorities said. He had a gun and a shovel and showed no remorse, authorities said, saying it wouldn't have bothered him if the victim had died.

Hobart, of New Smyrna Beach, was arrested Wednesday night. All three remained in custody early Friday and it was unknown whether they have attorneys.

Detroit Police Dept. / AP

This undated image made from video provided on Monday by the Detroit Police Department shows a "person of interest" in the theft of a Secret Service rental truck carrying equipment related to Vice President Joe Biden's Labor Day visit to Detroit.

Police have recovered a stolen rental truck that was carrying equipment for Vice President Joe Biden's Labor Day visit to Detroit.

The U-Haul truck was stolen late Saturday or early Sunday outside the Westin Book Cadillac hotel in downtown Detroit. It was found Monday in the New Center area north of downtown, Detroit Police Sgt. Eren Stephens told the Detroit News.

Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan told the newspaper it was found in an apartment parking lot near Henry Ford Hospital

Donovan had said the truck had equipment on board but no weapons or anything that could put the public at risk. He declined to say whether any of the equipment was stolen. A law enforcement official briefed on the issue told the Detroit News the vehicle held portable metal detectors and that some of the equipment was missing when the truck was recovered.

Biden was in Detroit to address a union rally Monday to mark Labor Day. The rally site is near the hotel. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Texas Department of Public Safety / AP

A pickup truck crashed into trees in Goliad County, Texas, on Sunday, killing at least 13 people and injuring 10 others, authorities said.

Updated at 5:31 p.m. ET: Fourteen people died after a pickup truck loaded with suspected illegal immigrants veered off the highway and crashed into trees in rural South Texas, authorities said.

State troopers and Goliad County sheriff's investigators were investigating Sunday's crash. A trooper told KRIS-TV, the NBC affiliate in Corpus Christi, Tex., that it appeared a tire on the truck blew out before the vehicle went off the road and struck two trees.

Authorities said they did not immediately know the names and ages of the victims.

Federal officials believe the 23 people riding in the Ford pickup truck were from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras.

"We suspect at this time it is going to be illegal immigrants that were in the vehicle, based on the way they were traveling,'' said Lt. Glen Garrett of the Texas Department of Public Safety, Reuters reported.

Vehicle laden with passengers
Gerald Bryant, also of  the Texas Department of Public Safety, told The Associated Press the dead and wounded were various ages and included at least two young children.

"This is the most people I've seen in any passenger vehicle, and I've been an officer for 38 years," Bryant said.

The pickup was heading north on U.S. 59 around 7 p.m. (9 p.m. ET) Sunday when it traveled off the right side of the highway near the community of Berclair in Goliad County, Bryant said.

The 23 people were loaded inside both the truck's cab and bed.

Six of those who died were still inside the truck when emergency crews arrived to find the mangled vehicle, Bryant said. A man who claimed to have been the driver of the vehicle was ejected but survived, Bryant told the San Antonio Express-News.

He said several of the surviving victims had life-threatening injuries. He did not have their official conditions but described them as "very serious." The injured were taken to various hospitals in San Antonio, Victoria and Corpus Christi. Berclair is about 100 miles southeast of San Antonio.

'Very traumatic'
Border Patrol will assist with the investigation, authorities said.

Read more from NBC News station KRIS-TV in Corpus Christi

Crash investigators stayed at the scene into the late hours Sunday to assess the crash, which halted traffic on U.S. 59. "It's been very chaotic here, and it's very traumatic," Bryant told the Express-News earlier from the scene. "It's only first responders out here, and it's very solemn."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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AP

This image provided by the Illinois Department of Corrections shows Robert B. Rhoades, a trucker who kept a torture dungeon in the cab of his long-haul rig.

A serial killer who set up a torture chamber in his truck and kidnapped mostly female hitchhikers across the United States has admitted murdering a newlywed couple in Texas, according to reports.

Robert Ben Rhoades -- already serving a life sentence for the death of a 14-year-old girl in Illinois -- this week pleaded guilty in West Texas to killing Patricia Candace Walsh and her husband Scott Zyskowski, both in their 20s, the Deseret News reported.

Prosecutors had agreed not to seek the death penalty in exchange for the pleas and Rhoades, 65, was given two life sentences, the News said.

The paper said Rhoades, a long-haul truck driver, was the subject of the book "Roadside Prey" by Alva Busch.

In his cab was "a type of dungeon with handcuffs on the ceiling," the News reported. In 1996, the Tucson Weekly, citing officials, said it was believed that Rhoades had been killing an average of three women a month by the early 1990s.

The Associated Press reported the couple, from Seattle, were hitchhiking to Georgia to preach the Christian gospel, when they took a ride from Rhoades near El Paso, Texas in early 1990.

FBI spokeswoman Shauna Dunlap said investigations concerning Rhoades were continuing.

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