Michigan gas clerk helps save kidnapped teen girl who mouthed ‘help’
A Michigan gas station clerk helped save a 16-year-old girl who entered his store and mouthed the word “help” after a man had kidnapped her at gunpoint on her way to school last week, authorities said.
The Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office on Thursday charged the suspect, Donald James Joseph Arthur Fields, 48, of Hamtramck, Michigan, with two counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, one count of kidnapping, one count of possession of a firearm by a prohibited person and one count of felonious assault, Chief Hussein Farhat of the Hamtramck Police Department said at a news conference. Fields also faces other felony firearm charges.
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Fields is being held without bond in Wayne County Jail, Farhat said. A court-appointed lawyer for Fields could not immediately be reached.
A girl who attends Frontier International Academy in Hamtramck, just outside Detroit, was waiting for a bus just after 7 a.m. on April 13 when a man, identified by authorities as Fields, placed something at her back, forced her into his van and drove away, prosecutors said in a news release. A fellow female student who saw what happened immediately called 911, and police were dispatched for a possible kidnapping, prosecutors said.
Fields drove to a gas-station convenience store in Detroit, which he entered with the girl and had her buy cigarettes for him, prosecutors said. Prosecutors say Fields sexually assaulted the girl in the van.
The gas station clerk, Abdulrahman Abohatem, said in an interview with WXYZ-TV in Detroit that he found it strange the man had the girl pay for the cigarettes. Then the girl mouthed “help,” he said.
Abohatem stepped out from behind the store’s protective glass, told the girl to get behind him and kicked the man out of the store, he said.
Police arrived moments later and arrested Fields, confiscated a handgun and seized the van, prosecutors said.
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