A 12-year-old North Carolina girl was allegedly abducted by her friend’s uncle during a weekend sleepover and taken into a wooded area before she escaped and told a passing driver she had been kidnapped.
The child was spending Sunday night at a neighbor’s home in Lillington, about 40 miles southwest of Raleigh, when authorities say 38-year-old Daniel Gear woke her and began terrorizing her, WNCN reported.
Gear allegedly forced the unidentified girl into his truck and drove toward a wooded area, where he then “made her get out” of the vehicle, according to the report.
Police said the girl was able to break free Sunday afternoon after Gear parked the truck behind an Erwin Department of Motor Vehicles office, roughly 11 miles from Lillington.
The DMV’s posted hours show the office is closed on Saturdays and Sundays.
As the girl fled the woods near US Highway 421, which cuts through Erwin and runs in front of the DMV office, passing motorist Jennifer Maxwell noticed her along the roadside.
Maxwell, a mother of three, told WRAL the child had no shoes and was covered in scratches when she “came running out of the woods and down the embankment.”
“She kind of just dropped in the ditch and was just crying hysterically,” Maxwell said. “I rolled down my window, and I was like, ‘Baby, are you okay?’ And she was like, ‘No, I’ve been kidnapped.’
“And I was like, ‘Are you serious?’ She was like, ‘Yes I’m serious. I was kidnapped.”
The girl said Gear had been “pushing her, grabbing her shoulder and making her walk,” according to Maxwell.
“She said they had been walking for a couple of hours,” Maxwell said.
“She was very scratched up, like her legs had lines all over them. Either she went through briars or thick brush.”
Maxwell and the girl went to a local police station to report the alleged kidnapping, but she doesn’t consider herself to be a Good Samaritan.
“I just thank God that I could be where I was,” she said. “And God knows if that girl didn’t get away, what would have happened.”
She also revealed that she was caught up in a car accident on the same day she picked up the girl.
Gear was arrested at around 8:15 p.m. Sunday after a seven-hour manhunt, involving drones and K9s. Cops had warned he was armed and dangerous.
He was charged with first-degree kidnapping and assault, and appeared in court for the first time on Monday.
His next scheduled court date is Sept. 1 and a judge has set his bond at $2.5 million.
Neighbors horrified by what had unfolded admitted they didn’t really know much about Gear.
“He never really came out of the house. He worked from home,” Justin Powers told WNCN.
