A 12-year-old child has managed to escape the man who held her captive in the United States.
“She’s a hero,” Tallapoosa County Sheriff Jimmy Abbett told reporters. The latter gave a press conference on Tuesday after a 12-year-old girl was found alone along a road in Alabama. The girl was seen by a driver who immediately called the emergency services. Taken to hospital, she told the police that she had been held against her will in a mobile home. When the investigators arrived at the address she had indicated, they discovered the decomposing corpses of two people next to which the young victim would have been tied to a bed. Captive, she would have been drugged and forced to ingest alcohol.
Police said she miraculously managed to escape by chewing on the bonds holding her. A man has been arrested in this case. Jose Pascual-Reyes, 37, was in the home when authorities intervened. He was soon charged with kidnapping, murder and abuse of a corpse. Many details have yet to come to light and the search is just beginning, but Sheriff Abbett said the child was not reported missing at the time of her captivity. “She is safe now. We want it to stay that way,” he explained. He said the suspect had been living there since last February but could not estimate how long the little girl had been held captive.
Other people lived with them. The relationship between the suspect and the victims has not been disclosed, nor the identity of the two dead people. “It’s horrible to have a crime scene of this nature and also to have a 12-year-old minor involved,” said the sheriff, quoted by Kpax.