A Texas father used the parental controls on his teenage daughter’s cell phone to find and help rescue her after she was kidnapped at knifepoint while walking her dog on Christmas, authorities allege.
The 15-year-old girl at the center of a case, which quickly gained national attention in the US over the weekend, was reportedly kidnapped in the Houston suburb of Porter. Her parents said she took her dog for a walk and had not returned by the time she was supposed to, according to a statement from the Montgomery county sheriff’s office.
Her father subsequently located her phone through the device’s parental controls, the agency’s statement said. The phone was about 2 miles (3.2km) away from him in a secluded, partly wooded area in neighboring Harris county.
Deputies said the father headed to that spot and found his daughter as well as her dog inside a pickup truck with a partly nude man inside. She then managed to escape with a hand from her father, who called law enforcement officials, said the statement from the Montgomery sheriff’s office.
The vast majority of kidnappings are custody disputes between parents. For instance, one parent has custody, the other has visitation. And the parent with visitation takes the child out of town to see their grandparents, without asking permission first. Under the rules of their custody agreement, that is kidnapping.
Is that worth life in prison? Or even 5 years? Minimum sentences are the “zero tolerance policy for fighting in school” of the legal world. They remove any nuance or discretion, just so some lawmaker can say they are tough on crime.