A quick-thinking dad saved his 3-year-old daughter from being kidnapped by knocking the suspect out before he could take the little girl from a local park. Freddie Cantrell and his family live just across the street from Regional Park in Auburn, California and often takes his two daughters there to play. The kids were there one Saturday with their mother and stepfather one Saturday afternoon when a man tried to take 3-year-old Aubrey. As soon as his ex called him, he ran across the street and sprung into action.
- Their 6-year-old daughter witnessed the whole thing. Cantrell recalled the moment the girls’ mother called him frantically and begged him to get to the park as soon as possible. “I got a phone call from the mother saying, ‘Hey you got to get down here quick. Somebody tried to kidnap Aubrey,” he told CBS 13 Sacramento. His daughter Natalie saw the whole thing happen and told the outlet: “The guy walked up and started dragging Aubrey and running with her and skipping with her.”
- All three parents tried to corner the man. While Aubrey’s mom and stepdad ran at the suspect from one side of the park, Cantrell came at him from the other end and managed to catch up with him, but the man wasn’t going down without a fight. “He tried to swing at me with handcuffs wrapped around his fingers and try to use them as brass knuckles, and that’s when I just took action and try to knock him out,” Cantrell recalled.
- Thankfully, Cantrell subdued the man and police turned up shortly after. Placer County deputies arrived on the scene shortly after Cantrell made the citizens arrest and took the suspect, a 26-year-old man named Yonel Hernandez-Velasco, into custody and charged him with attempted kidnapping and arrest with a deadly weapon.
- The incident was a harsh reminder for neighborhood parents at how dangerous the park can be. “You see the bad stuff on the news and hope it’s not going to happen to your kids, so you got to just keep an eye out I guess,” said local mom April McGuinness. Her 11-year-old son added: “It’s better than me having to get kidnapped because I come here alone.”
- Cantrell doesn’t think he’s a hero for stepping in. After all, he’s only doing what any father would do to protect his children. “They’re saying ‘Oh you’re a hero for saving that little girl,’ Well that little girl is my daughter, and I’m just doing the fatherly thing,” he insisted.
