An 11-year-old Bronx girl who fought off an alleged kidnapping attempt this week has shared the terrifying details of the encounter, including the moment she pushed the suspect away and escaped.
Fatima was walking home from school in Mott Haven at about 6 p.m., after dark, when she became separated from her older brother. That was when a stranger walking in the opposite direction approached her.
“I felt very nervous and shocked. I was scared,” Fatima told The Post.
After passing the man, she said, he turned around and began questioning her.
“As soon as I passed him a little bit, he started asking questions,” Fatima recalled. “Where did I live, if I was 18.”
She told him no and attempted to continue walking, but the man approached her again and asked for a hug.
“He was like, ‘Can I have a hug?’ I was like, ‘No, no thank you,’” Fatima said.
When he asked a second time, the situation quickly became physical.
“I didn’t answer him the second time, so he grabbed me hard,” she said, demonstrating how the man seized her wrist.
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Fatima managed to pull her hand free before pushing the stranger away and running to safety.
Her mother, Fatoumata Jaiteh, said Fatima pinched the man’s hand, broke free and ran back to her brother. The children then returned to the school, where the dean contacted police.
Jaiteh described the alleged attacker as “a total stranger.”
Investigators obtained surveillance video showing the suspect, but he remains at large as police continue searching for him.
Jaiteh said she was “panicked” when she learned what had happened, partly because she endured a similar attempted kidnapping while she was in high school.
“I know what it got me into, so I didn’t want my daughter to go through that, especially on her birthday,” she said.
Despite the frightening incident, Fatima returned home that evening and celebrated her birthday with cake. She also went back to school the following day.
“She is one of those kids who doesn’t like to be absent from school. She was going to school, even though I told her to stay home with me for the day. She said no,” Jaiteh said.
