After falling prey to a kidnapping attempt, a 6-year-old girl from Louisville has been reunited with her family thanks to a quick-thinking police officer at the scene of the crime.
Bodycam footage obtained by WDRB-TV showed a police officer arriving at a home where a vehicle was parked in the driveway.
According to the local report detailing the arrest citation, witnesses saw a man abduct the young girl while she was playing outside last Friday.
She was taken while she was riding her bicycle.
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When the police arrived at the scene, one of the officers ordered the driver, 40-year-old Robby Wildt, “Let me see your hands! Put your hands in the air! Stay right there!”
The cop instructed the suspect to walk backward and get on his knees.
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A dispatcher then said there was someone else in the car, so another officer shouted out to the other cop, “Open the passenger door!”
When the officer opened it, he saw a petrified little girl.
The police officer told the girl, “It’s OK,” as she cried, “I want my daddy.”
As for Wildt, he has been charged with kidnapping of a minor and has a bond of $1 million. On Saturday, he pleaded not guilty.
“You just can’t get there fast enough,” Officer Jason Burba, who found the girl, told WDRB-TV. “Seconds feel like hours. Your only thought is getting there as fast as you can.”
Louisville Metro Police Sgt. Joe Keeling noted how “extremely rare” it is for law enforcement officers to see a stranger kidnapping as it happens.
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“She’s a 6-year-old girl that obviously couldn’t help herself,” Keeling said. “She was absolutely terrified. I hate the fact she went through this. I hate the fact this is probably something that’s going to affect her the rest of her life.”
“But we were able to get there,” he continued, “get in the area, find her, rescue her from her captor, and we were able to prevent anything worse than what had already happened from happening to her.”
Burba and Keeling praised the bystanders who acted quickly to call 911, saying their decision made a big difference in rescuing the child.