A 16-year-old girl from Hamtramck, Michigan, is safe today because a gas-station clerk trusted his gut and stepped in when she silently pleaded for help. The teenager had been abducted at gunpoint on her morning walk to the bus stop, but within half an hour classmates, police, and one observant employee combined forces to bring her home alive.<\/p>\n
Monday, April 13, started like any other for the student at Frontier International Academy. She left her house around 7 a.m. and headed toward the bus stop on Jos. Campau Street, earbuds in and backpack on. Surveillance cameras later showed a dark sedan pulling alongside her. According to investigators, the driver\u2014an adult male she had never met\u2014flashed a handgun and ordered her into the passenger seat. Several other students at the stop witnessed the confrontation and immediately began sharing what they had seen on Snapchat and via group text, tagging the victim\u2019s friends and older siblings.<\/p>\n
Hamtramck police credit those first frantic posts with giving them a head start. \u201cWithin minutes we had a description of the car and partial plate,\u201d Lieutenant Mike Karpinski said. \u201cKids don\u2019t always call 911 right away, but they do post. We monitor social media for exactly this reason.\u201d Detectives also issued a ping order to the girl\u2019s cell-phone carrier, narrowing the search radius to a five-mile corridor along I-75.<\/p>\n
Roughly 30 minutes after the abduction, the suspect\u2019s sedan rolled into a BP station on Detroit\u2019s east side, only five miles from where the girl had been taken. Surveillance footage shows the man walking his captive toward the door, gripping her wrist. Once inside, he told her to buy him a pack of Newport cigarettes. The teen approached the counter while the suspect hovered near the beverage coolers.<\/p>\n
Behind the register stood 29-year-old Abdulrahman Abohatem, a Yemeni immigrant who has worked the morning shift for three years. \u201cShe kept looking back at him, not at me,\u201d Abohatem told local station WXYZ. \u201cWhen I asked for ID, she leaned forward and mouthed the word help<\/em>\u2014no sound, just lips.\u201d Abohatem said the hair on his neck stood up. \u201cI\u2019ve seen people steal, I\u2019ve seen people drunk, but I never saw fear like that.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead of completing the sale, Abohatem stepped out from behind the counter, placing himself between the girl and her captor. \u201cI told him, \u2018You need to leave now.\u2019 He said, \u2018Mind your business.\u2019 I said, \u2018She is my business.\u2019\u201d Abohatem pushed the man toward the exit, yelling for the girl to stand behind the lottery kiosk where cameras and bullet-resistant glass offered some protection. Meanwhile, another customer had already dialed 911.<\/p>\n While the scuffle unfolded, Hamtramck officers\u2014guided by the social-media tips and cell-phone pings\u2014were converging on the station. Dash-cam video released by the department shows two patrol cars sliding to a stop beside the gas pumps. Abohatem pointed toward the suspect, who was attempting to re-enter the store. Officers tackled the man and recovered a loaded 9 mm pistol from his waistband.<\/p>\n The entire encounter, from the girl mouthing \u201chelp\u201d to the suspect being handcuffed, lasted 92 seconds. \u201cIt was textbook teamwork between civilians and law enforcement,\u201d Mayor Adam Alharbi said at a press conference. \u201cOne person chose to get involved, and that changed everything.\u201d<\/p>\n Authorities identified the alleged kidnapper as 32-year-old Deontae Lee Mitchell, a Detroit resident with a violent criminal history. Court records show Mitchell was charged in 2014 with criminal sexual conduct, though that case was plea-bargained down to unlawful imprisonment. He later served 18 months for domestic assault. At the time of Monday\u2019s abduction, Mitchell was out on bond awaiting trial for a separate weapons charge.<\/p>\n Prosecutors have now charged him with:<\/p>\n A judge denied bond, citing public-safety risk. If convicted on the kidnapping count, Mitchell faces a mandatory minimum of 25 years and could receive life without parole.<\/p>\n By Tuesday afternoon, a makeshift thank-you display had appeared outside the BP station: balloons, poster boards covered in colorful marker, and a banner reading \u201cHeroes Walk Among Us.\u201d Frontier International Academy principal Rima Kader visited the store to deliver a personal note. \u201cOur kids are taught to speak up, but this young lady had to stay silent to survive,\u201d Kader said. \u201cMr. Abdulrahman spoke for her.\u201d<\/p>\n Hamtram<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 16-year-old girl from Hamtramck, Michigan, is safe today because a gas-station clerk trusted his gut and stepped in when she silently pleaded for help. The teenager had been abducted at gunpoint on her morning walk to the bus stop, but within half an hour classmates, police, and one observant…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3774,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/influencerswiki.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/influencerswiki.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/influencerswiki.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/influencerswiki.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/influencerswiki.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/influencerswiki.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9200\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/influencerswiki.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/influencerswiki.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/influencerswiki.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/influencerswiki.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Police Arrive Within Minutes Thanks to Real-Time Tracking<\/h2>\n
Who Is the Suspect?<\/h2>\n
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Community Reacts: \u2018Heroes Walk Among Us\u2019<\/h2>\n