Woman escapes attempted kidnapping as neighbors rally to save her
By Kristen Consillio
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DIAMOND HEAD, Hawaii (KITV) — This video shows a man creeping behind two women walking into a parking garage at around noon on Monday.
“And then all of a sudden, we felt somebody really close, evil, and we both kind of turned. And his face was filled with anger,” said an elderly woman who was with the victim.
Within seconds, the man begins chasing a 24-year-old woman.
This is where the man caught the woman from behind and tried to carry her to his car while she screamed for help.
“She was fighting with all her might,” the elderly woman said. “And at the same time, I was really impressed because she kept saying to him, ‘You don’t want to do this.’ She was trying to give him a conscience and I’m screaming, ‘Help! Help!’ as loud as I can.”
That’s when neighbors and bystanders jumped into action.
“There was terror. I looked out and I saw a man with a woman in a bear hug. She’s off the ground and flailing and screaming,” said neighbor Beverly Lewis. “We just started screaming at him to drop her, put her down, get out of here. We heard other neighbors say the same kind of thing.”
Then suddenly, “the guy dropped her in the middle of the road and backed up, floored it,” she said.
The attempted kidnapping is now traumatizing both the victims and neighbors.
“My friend and I are having night terrors,” the elderly woman said. “I kept waking up screaming.”
“All of us are horrified,” Lewis said. “You see videos of things like that, but to experience a savage attack on a person, it’s speechless.”
“He was over 200 pounds… and he was solid,” added neighbor Mike Finkelstein. “Yeah, he was a solid guy and he went down and he just picked her right up.”
And while the community is still reeling, calling for vigilance in the quaint and normally quiet neighborhood, it’s aloha that saved the day.
“The community saved her, and I think that’s the best part of the story is that everybody, everybody rallied,” Lewis said.
“There were people praying over us,” the elderly woman said. “They all came from their heart and they were all here to support us and help us through it, and they scared him away.”
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