12-Yr-Old Being Dragged Down Street By Kidnapper, Stranger Screams 3 Words That Save Her Life
The daily routines of life can become so commonplace that we operate almost on autopilot, sometimes oblivious to the world around us.
But thanks to the keen instincts of a Santa Ana, California, mother going about her daily routine, a kidnapper was thwarted and a little girl saved.
It was Feb. 21 when the mother, who asked not to be identified, dropped her children off at school.
She was driving down a busy road when her motherly instincts told her something was desperately wrong about the scene she watched unfold before her eyes.
It appeared that a young girl was being forcefully led down the road by an older woman who had a tight grip on the girl’s shoulders.
With only seconds to figure out what to do, the mother slowed her vehicle and decided to intervene.
The mother called out to the girl, 12-year-old Amy Martinez, asking if she was okay.
When Amy said no, the mother came up with a brilliant way to help the child, by doing what she already knows how to do: mother.
The mother screamed at the kidnapper, “I’m her mother!” and yelled for her to let the girl go.
The lie worked, and the kidnapper released the frightened child into the mother’s custody. The mother immediately took Amy to her school, Lathrop Intermediate School, and called the police.
“I thought that I was never going to see my mom or my family again,” Amy said.
She’d simply been walking to school when the transient woman, later identified as Claudia Hernandez Diaz, wrapped Amy up in a bear hug and began leading her down the road.
“She said she had, in her mind, had five seconds to come up with something to save this child,” Police said. “She tells the suspect that she’s the child’s mother and she wants the child back.”
Diaz was later apprehended and arrested, charged with attempted kidnapping. Amy’s aunt, Cinthia Esparza, was grateful for the hero who saved her precious niece.
“It’s a place where there’s a lot of cars and not one stopped until this lady came,” a tearful Esparza expressed. “In our eyes, she’s our angel.”
Amy called the woman a “hero,” and thanked her for saving her life. “I was thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m going to live,'” Amy said, after recognizing the good Samaritan was there to help.
And the good Samaritan said she was simply reacting as any typical mother would. “You’re a parent, you see somebody else’s child in danger, automatically you react as if it was yours,” she stated.
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