The father of a teenage girl who is believed to have been abducted on Christmas Day found her using her phone’s parental controls, according to Texas authorities.
A 15-year-old girl was reported abducted Thursday from Porter, a Houston suburb, after her parents said she took their dog out for a walk but did not return, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.
Authorities said the girl’s father tracked her phone using parental controls, which led them to a secluded, partially wooded area in Harris County, about two miles from Porter.
The sheriff’s office said her father found her and her dog with a partially naked 23-year-old man inside a maroon pickup truck. The father helped his daughter escape from the truck and contacted law enforcement, the sheriff’s office said.
Authorities did not release the name of the father or his teenage daughter.
The man, identified as Giovanni Rosales Espinoza, was taken into custody without incident and charged with aggravated kidnapping and indecency with a child, the Sheriff’s Office said, accusing him of threatening the girl with a knife and abducting her from the street. According to authorities, he is currently being held in the Montgomery County Jail without bond.
It was not immediately clear whether Espinoza had legal representation.
“Christmas is a day of joy, but this man shattered that joy by targeting a child,” Montgomery County Sheriff Wesley Doolittle said in a statement. “I am incredibly proud of our deputies and detectives who worked tirelessly to ensure this dangerous predator was quickly apprehended and is now off our streets.”
“Be assured that your Sheriff’s Office is on alert every hour of every day to keep your families safe,” he said.
Christian Santana Contribution,
