Tekamah Woman Sentenced to 100 Months for Kidnapping Grandchildren

United States Attorney Jan Sharp announced that Nora Gilda Guevara-Tirana, age 43, of Tekamah, Nebraska, was sentenced in federal court on February 23, 2022, in Omaha for kidnapping.  United States District Judge Brian C. Buescher sentenced Guevara-Tirana to 100 months of imprisonment.  There is no parole in the federal system.  After completing her term of imprisonment, Guevara-Tirana will begin a 3-year term of supervised release. Guevara-Tirana, originally from Mexico, faces deportation proceedings after her release from prison.

Guevara-Tirana was convicted on August 31, 2021, of kidnapping after a five-day jury trial.

On April 20, 2020, Guevara-Tirana requested her co-defendant, Tanner Leichleiter, take her two grandchildren, ages 4 and 7, without car seats or shoes to Kansas to teach their mother a lesson.  Witnesses testified that Leichleiter took the children to a drug house in Harvard, Nebraska, and received a phone call while there that Guevara-Tirana had been arrested for kidnapping.  Leichleiter immediately took the children to Kansas.  An Amber Alert was issued and Leichleiter was located with the children after a report from a farmer in the area.  When law enforcement located Leichleiter and the children, they found 10 guns, multiple ammunition and drugs within reach of the children in the vehicle.

This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Tekamah Police Department, Sedgwick County Sheriff, and Wichita Police Department.