‘My Heart Dropped:’ 11-Year-Old Sister Saved Younger Brother From Kidnapper’s Grasp

Stock image of siblings playing together. (Pexels/Pixabay)

An 11-year-old girl has saved her 6-year-old brother from an attempted abduction outside their home in Cleveland on May 23.

A man approached Julianne and Hayden Moore while they were playing outside their home at Old Brooklyn on Thursday night, reported Fox8.

Julianne said the man tried to talk to them but they couldn’t understand what he was saying. “It was like gibberish so we really didn’t think much of it,” the 11-year-old told Fox8.

She said after that the man walked away but suddenly turned back, grabbed Hayden by the hand and tried to pull him away.

“When he tried to grab my brother, I knew like this was serious. This was not like any handshake or anything,” Julianne said.

She said she followed her parents’ lessons who had always taught her to watch over her younger brother. “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.

Their father Joshua Moore explained what happened that day: “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 he ran to where the children were playing and saw the man walking down the street.

“I said, ‘Excuse me, did you touch my child?’ And he just threw his arms out like this and continued walking. At that point, I came back. My daughter was crying and upset, and we called the police,” the father told Fox8.

The family reported the matter to the police and, based on Julianne’s description, the Cleveland Division of Police arrested Pedro Luyando, 33, of Cleveland on charges of abduction.

Julianne said she has been affected by what happened that day. “My heart dropped because I know that I saved my brother. He would not be here right now,” she said.

Child Abductions in the United States

A child becomes missing or gets abducted every 40 seconds in the United States, according to Parents.com.

It says based on the identity of abductor there are three types of kidnappings—family kidnapping where the child is abducted by someone from within the family, acquaintance kidnapping, and stranger kidnappings.

Family kidnappings account for 49 percent of the total, acquaintance kidnapping about 27 percent, and stranger kidnapping about 24 percent.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) reports that in 2018 it helped law enforcement and families with 25,000 cases of missing children.

Out of these, 92 percent were endangered runaways, 4 percent were family abductions, and less than 1 percent were non-family abductions.

Reuters quotes the FBI as saying that since 2010 there have been fewer than 350 cases of abductions of people below 21 years of age each year.

“It doesn’t happen very often, but they’re certainly the cases that capture our attention because they strike at our worst fears,” Robert Lowery, a vice president at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children told Reuters.

Most of the stranger kidnappings happen in outdoor locations and victimize more females than males. Most of these happen on the street and the abductor tries to grab the victim or lure them into vehicles.

“In 80 percent of abductions by strangers, the first contact between the child and the abductor occurs within a quarter mile of the child’s home,” said Parents.com.

The portal says acting fast is critical. In abduction cases where children are ultimately murdered, 74 percent of children are found dead within three hours of kidnapping.