A frightening abduction in the United States ended with the victim escaping and the suspect behind bars, after a young woman managed to free herself from a man who had posed as a police officer to seize her. The case has drawn attention both for the brazen nature of the crime and for the quick thinking that allowed the woman to get away.
According to the account, the young woman had only just graduated and was walking between her parents' houses when a man approached her. Claiming to be law enforcement, he forced her into his car, turning what should have been a short, familiar walk into a life-threatening ordeal.
The danger escalated when the man drove onto a dirt road and headed toward the trunk of his car. Sensing that this was her moment, the woman seized the chance to escape, even though her hands were handcuffed behind her back, refusing to wait and see what the driver intended to do next.
In a remarkable act of self-rescue, she managed to wiggle herself across the back seat and out of the driver's door before running away. Her escape, while still restrained, became the turning point that prevented the situation from ending in tragedy on the isolated road.
The man then got back into his car and pulled up to a passing driver, a man named Moore, again claiming to be police. Moore, however, found the encounter strange, noting that the supposed officer was driving a teal green Cadillac with a busted-out window patched with plastic on the back, an unlikely vehicle for law enforcement.
The young woman had told Moore that the man still had her phone and her diploma, explaining that she had just graduated the day before. When a second driver stopped and called 911, the suspect sped away from the scene, leaving witnesses to alert authorities to what had happened.
Police later identified the man as 39-year-old Jonathan Willard and arrested him the following day. He has been charged with kidnapping and impersonating an officer, bringing a swift end to a case that, but for the woman's escape and the intervention of passing drivers, could have had a far darker outcome.