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.
Porter Texas is the single most vile place I have ever had the displeasure of spending time in. Its primary exports are meth and x-phobes, and random violence is basically a daily threat if you are not white. I am not white and got called every fucking slur you can imagine in my brief time there, among other forms of hostility. By complete strangers. Many of the slurs didn’t even apply to my own ethnic background. Like, very obviously didnt apply either, and it was regular enough that I am sure it was partly intentional.
And tbc, this would happen at random, on the streets. People would start yelling this garbage at strangers out of fucking nowhere. Sometimes accompanied by a throwing of whatever literal garbage they had available atm and a little “go back to your own country”. I am literally from here in just about every conceivable way lol.
This was all pre-2016 too, so I’d be surprised if it hasn’t gotten much, much worse by now. Nothing good comes out of Porter Texas.
I once shared a story here about neo-nazis kicking down my front door. Those nazis were based in Porter and kidnapping girls in ways that this story definitely echoes. Just a bad, bad place to find yourself on so many gd levels.
I’m sorry you went through that. Hopefully, wherever you reside now has more love and compassion. If nothing else, I hope you are safe!
These people vote, and their vote is worth like 4 of ours
The restraint that man showed to not beat the everloving shit out of the guy who kidnapped and presumably intended to rape his daughter is just incredible.
Friend they are in TEXAS, I’m surprised shithead didn’t catch a clip to the dome.
Magazine, but agreed.
I mean, people still hunt with bolt-actions, so it’s plausible he could catch either lol
It’s Texas it is entirely possible for them to be using a clip fed gun with an integrated magazine like some bolt actions use, the M1 grande uses, and the oh so glorious Mauser Broomhandle.
Unless he was just casually rocking a M1 Garand, I suppose. That has an internal magazine, and the clip simply holds the rounds in position.
I’m not surprised he got his kid out first, I’m surprised he called the cops instead of going back there alone.
He has a child.
He knows what it would mean for the child if he sat years behind bars. That changes the calculation quite a bit!A loving parent won’t get themself in a jail unless it’s something that benefits the child enough to cover for losing a parent for many years.
Yeahhhhh, had he gone back alone, that probably would have been an easy murder charge. However, I can’t say I would blame him, nor do I believe I would have the same restraint he showed.
IMO he’d get a plea bargain. To wit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Jeffery_Doucet
Plauché was initially charged with second-degree murder [Of Doucet], but agreed to a plea bargain in which he pleaded no contest to manslaughter. He was sentenced to seven years’ suspended sentence, with five years’ probation and 300 more hours of community service, which he completed in 1989.
That’s still a lot of time
He didn’t do any prison time, it was all suspended sentencing
Oh I thought he served seven years because they suspended a longer prison sentence. Cool then.
Suspended sentences work so that if you trigger the activation of the suspended sentence during the probation time, the whole length of the suspended sentence starts rolling. Therefore, if at 4 years and 11 months of a 5-year probation you do a crime that triggers the activation of your suspended sentence, you sit 7 years. And if you commit the same crime on day 8 of the probation, you still sit the same 7 years.
At least over here in Finland it can also work so that the suspended sentence is only a couple of months for some crimes, but the probation is still 4 years or 6 years or whatever. People often read that “damn, only two months and they are free”, but in reality it means you must spend 5-ish years having to be mindful of not doing any similar-ish, even much less serious, crime or you’ll find yourself sitting behind bars for those two months plus whatever the repeated offence carries.
A suspended sentence is basically “be good during probation and you won’t go to jail.”
When I read the story I’d assumed she’d been kidnapped by ICE. After reading it I’m still thinking it was an ICE agent.
Under Texas law, aggravated kidnapping cases in general can carry at least five years in prison. And many cases involving indecency with a child generally can carry at least two years imprisonment along with sex offender registration.
Texas laws are fucking insane. 5 years for aggravated kidnapping? What a shithole.
minimum 5 years. Maximum is life.
No! Shithole!
Yes minimum. That means it is possible that the person who kidnapped your child will be back out of prison in 5 years. Thats no good.
Minimum sentences are there for a lower bound for the least bad version of a crime. “Aggravated kidnapping” would also be using a weapon to force a guy to drive you to where your stolen car is and give it back. The thirst for higher and higher minimum sentences because otherwise a judge is going to let a bad guy be set free after “only” a half decade is childish and has caused immense harm to our society.
The bloodthirsty pursuit of vengeance masquerading as “justice”.
Yet most kidnappings are custody disagreements. It’s quite possible for a kidnapping to be a desperate parent wanting to be reunited with their kid. I’m not excusing such a choice but clearly that can be a mitigating factor and there might even be no danger or trauma to the kid.
Any time you insist on harsh minimum sentences for a crime, you potentially cause harm to cases where the crime isn’t as cut and dry
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.
That’s ridiculous. It’s possible the jury finds him not-guilty - does that mean you want people executed by police?
This is the penalty for a “class 1 felony” across the board. Not just this crime. So murder, etc.
Just because it’s possible doesn’t’ mean its likely. You want the judge and jury to have a wide range of options to handle many circumstances. What if a mother who locks her autistic child in her room is found guilty of “kidnapping” even though she was acting in her child’s best interest albeit in a way that was damaging? You may not want to punish her the same as a guy who grabbed a young girl off the street.
deleted by creator
And that’s for normies, just be rich or a Republican and you have no consequences ever.
do it enough and they make you president
Yeah but it gets to be somewhat taxing after the 30th or so felony. But nobody has to see your tax records so that’s fine.
Meanwhile if I had 2g of weed concentrate, the same 2g I just bought at the local dispensary on my lunch break, I’d be looking at a felony with at least a year in prison and a minimum $20k fine.
Farther probably would have been off scott free murdering the guy too
Texas, where you are such a rugged individual that law enforcement is only set dressing. You got this! (^Except ^school ^shootings, ^where ^cops ^shoot ^kids ^and ^stop ^the ^parents)
Just a heads up, to get superscripted text you need to wrap the text in carets. ^This^ turns into this
“Giovanni Rosales Espinoza”
Cue Trump complaining about immigrants in 3-2-1…
I don’t think you have to wait, it just flows
When I read the headline, I immediately thought of ICE, and when I read the post, I thought of the US president…
Oh, it sounds like the dog survived too! I’m kind of surprised; usually stories like this are like “he shot the dog and kidnapped the girl” but instead they were both found.
It really is dumb not to get rid of devices when kidnapping. It’s 2025, you should assume everyone has several tracking devices.
Edit: kidnapper was dumb. That’s the point of a comment. Grow the fuck up
It is also really dumb to do kidnapping
Gotta get that dopamine.
I understood. One of my first thoughts was “what a dumbass, doesn’t he know that phones can track you”
And to the downvoters: understanding =/= agreeing
Is =/= like !=? I’ve never seen =/= before.
It’s just this:
≠I’m too lazy to find the unicode version on a computer keyboard.
≠
deleted by creator
Hardly the point of the comment. Get that dopamine though.
deleted by creator
It’s talking about how dumb people are. Only the biggest kind of idiot would assume I was in favor of kidnapping. That’s the kind of sick dopamine seeking nonsense that poisons Lemmy.
deleted by creator
I’m not reading any of that. You’re clearly a kidnapper who is pissed off I’m mocking kidnappers. See how dumb? Fuck off.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
