Would-Be Kidnapper Foiled After Running Into Angry Dad's Fist... Hard
When duty called, this father answered with a vengeance.
A would-be kidnapper who tried to abduct a 3-year-old girl near Sacramento, California, last week found himself facing the girl’s outraged father instead.
Then he found himself beaten to the ground.
According to the Placer County Sheriff’s Office and local media reports, the incident took place at about 7 p.m. Saturday in North Auburn Regional Park, about 30 miles outside Sacramento. A woman named Cecelia Sole was at the park with her boyfriend and her two young daughters.
A man identified as Yonel Hernandez-Velasco, 26, approached Sole’s younger child.
“He turned to my 3-year old and interlaced his fingers with hers and started skipping, like, making a game out of it,” Sole told KCRA after a court hearing in the case on Tuesday. “And when he realized my boyfriend and I were running at him, he grabbed her by the wrist and started dragging her.
“And I said, ‘You need to let her go now,'” she said. “And he lets her go and I grab both of my kids and start running.”
That’s when Sole called the girls’ father, Freddie Cantrell, who lives across the street from the park.
“I got a phone call from the mother saying, ‘Hey you got to get down here quick. Somebody tried to kidnap Aubrey,’” Cantrell told KOVR, CBS13.
At the park, Cantrell confronted Hernandez-Velasco, who tried to use a pair of handcuffs as brass knuckles to attack him.
It didn’t work out so well for him.
The sheriff’s office reported:
“When the father asked Hernandez Velasco what he was doing, Hernandez Velasco pulled the handcuffs from his pocket and wrapped them around his hand like brass knuckles. He charged toward the father, who punched him in the face. He came back at the father again, and he was again punched in the face. Hernandez Velasco fell to the ground and remained there until deputies and medical aid arrived.”
Hernandez-Velasco is charged with kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon, according to KCRA. His bail was originally set at $1.2 million, but after a court hearing on Tuesday, there is no bail in the case at all.
Hernandez-Velasco’s background was murky. KCRA reported that prosecutors told a judge in court Tuesday that the man is a “transient with no ties to the community.” He also has open misdemeanor charges of trespassing and driving under the influence stemming from 2016, the station reported.
But Cantrell didn’t need to know any of that on Saturday when his phone rang with the news that a stranger was trying to abduct his daughter.
He answered the call. And he answered it with a vengeance.
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