Brave 11-Year-Old Girl Saves Age 6 Brother from Attempted Abduction: 'My Heart Dropped'
It is a parent’s worst nightmare to envision strangers abducting children from their very own yards.
But 11-year-old Julianne Moore is proof that talking with your kids about how to handle dangerous situations empowers children to fight if a threat arises.
Julianne and her younger brother Hayden were playing in the front yard of their Cleveland, Ohio, home — something that most kids their age like to do.
All of a sudden, they noticed a strange man carrying a 2-liter plastic bottle of orange soda walking toward them, uttering words that the siblings did not understand.
“He started to talk to us, but we really couldn’t figure out what he was saying. It was like gibberish so we really didn’t think much of it,” Julianne told WJW.
Julianne recalled how the man initially walked past their yard and continued down the street. But he must have changed his mind, because he came back through the neighborhood and suddenly snatched Hayden, 6, out of his own front yard.
“I just grabbed my brother and went into the back yard because there was no time to panic.” https://t.co/rMd72pR8KE
— fox8news (@fox8news) May 27, 2019
When the man grabbed Hayden’s arm and tried to force him down the sidewalk, Julianne knew right away the man was trying to kidnap her little brother.
“When he tried to grab my brother, I knew like this was serious. This was not like any handshake or anything,” Julianne said.
She responded with an instant, heroic action that thwarted whatever intentions the man had with the boy.
“I just grabbed my brother and went into the backyard because there was no time to panic. You just have to go with it,” she said.
The siblings ran into the backyard and told their father, Joshua Moore, what had happened.
“My daughter came running back there with my son, dragging him by the arm and screaming. I said, ‘Julianne, what’s wrong?’ She said a man tried to abduct Hayden,” Moore said.
Moore ran outside and confronted the man, later identified as 33-year-old Pedro Luyando, who threw his arms up in the air as if to suggest he did not know what Moore was talking about.
The father went back to his house and called the police.
Cleveland police arrested Luyando about a half a mile from the home and charged him with child abduction, cleveand.com reported.
Julianne said her immediate reaction was to stay calm and do whatever she could to protect her younger brother, strategies her parents had taught her.
“My heart dropped because I know that I saved my brother. He would not be here right now,” she said.
This little girl is a big hero, and her story serves as an important reminder for caretakers to teach children how to defend themselves from harm.
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