When a predator tried to whisk her away, a 6-year-old from Hamilton, Ohio fought back and sent him running.
Then her father chased him down so that he would never attempt to harm another child ever again.
The assault and attempted kidnapping were captured on video showing the little girl taking out the trash to the curb.
A man is shown walking down the sidewalk and stops to inappropriately touch her.
He then grabs her arm and attempts to drag her along with him down the sidewalk.
The little girl bravely screamed for help and wriggled away from the man who just kept walking.
Her girl’s parents heard her scream from inside.
“I come in, like, ‘What’s wrong? What’s wrong?’ She says, ‘Somebody tried to kidnap me. Some man tried to take me, and he grabbed my private parts,'” the girl’s mother told WLWT 5.
The girl’s father took off running after the man and then hopped in his car to chase him.
“And he tried to dip in and out of alleys, through people’s yards to try to get away from me,” the girl’s father said. “The only thing that kept running through my mind was, ‘I can’t let him do this to another kid.'”
Dad was able to corner the suspect in an empty parking lot.
“He immediately cut into the parking lot behind Paul’s Auto. I went around the other side to see where he was at, and I found him sitting inside an old Dodge caravan,” dad said.
Police arrested the suspect named as 33-year-old Deric McPherson.
He was charged with two counts of kidnapping, one count of gross sexual imposition, and two counts of unlawful restraint.
He was held on $35,000 bail. The Washington Post reports that he was previously charged with rape in 2014, however, a grand jury dismissed the case.
“The trash can is literally 1o feet [away] from my front door …” mom told the news outlet. “It can happen in the blink of an eye.”
“When the cops put him in handcuffs, it took so much anguish away,” dad said.
Child Advocate for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Callahan Walsh, told Good Morning America that the child did everything she should have done.
“She was kicking, screaming, pulling away. It’s exactly what we teach kids what to do when a would-be abductor tries to grab them,’ Walsh said. “She’s the reason why she’s home safe tonight.”
Children are able to get away from an abductor 83 percent of the time when they kick, scream, or pull away.
Thankfully, the girl’s parents had prepared their child.
“I’ve always told her that if somebody ever touches her, talks to her or grabs her, make a scene, scream as loud as she can and fight. She screamed bloody murder and pulled against him and got away from him,” dad said.
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