High-Speed Chase Involving Kidnapping Suspect, Five-Year-Old Ends In Tragedy

A five-year-old girl tragically died in Florida on Thursday after a car driven by her alleged kidnapper crashed into a retention pond during a high-speed chase.

Around 8 p.m Thursday evening, police say a woman with a knife kidnapped the girl near Jacksonville, First Coast News reported. Police were called after the alleged kidnapping, and an “officer spotted the vehicle and attempted to approach when the suspect fled,” Christian Hancock, a spokesman with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, told reporters according to CNN.  

The ensuing police chase resulted in the suspect driving 30 miles across Jacksonville as multiple officers got involved in the pursuit. The woman attempted to exit the expressway when she crashed into a retention pond. 

“Officials say multiple officers, who were already on scene from the chase, jumped out of their cars and shed their gear, wading into the pond to help,” reported First Coast News. “The woman was taken into custody and rushed to the hospital for treatment.”

The five-year-old girl was still in the water-submerged car when police arrived, and she tragically drowned, her body being retrieved at the bottom of the pond by divers. 

A video report from First Coast News shows numerous police cars and officers near the pond with a rope attached to the submerged vehicle. A dive team also appears on the scene preparing to enter the water. 

While the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office believes the woman and girl knew each other, they were unsure of their exact relationship at the time of the report. A CNN report said, “WJXT reported that an officer had observed the suspect interacting familiarly with the girl before they fled from police.”

Early Friday morning, the Sheriff’s Office told the press that the kidnapping suspect faces charges of traffic homicide along with more charges expected to be added. 

On Tuesday, The Daily Wire reported on a 70-year-old kidnapper in California who has been approved for parole after he and three others abducted a bus full of 26 children and their driver in 1976. 

After Woods and his accomplices abducted 26 children and their bus driver, they took them more than 100 miles away to Livermore, California, where they forced them into a truck trailer that they buried 12 feet underground. 

Bus driver Ed Ray and 14-year-old student Michael Marshall were able to dig their way out of the buried trailer and get all 26 children to safety. Two weeks later, police caught woods and the two brothers helping him, and they were sent to prison on sentences of life with the possibility of parole. Woods was the final kidnapper left in prison and will now be able to get out on parole pending California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom’s decision to let it stand or send it to a parole board for a full review. 

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