Body cam footage shows dramatic rescue of kidnapped girl in Texas – NBC News, NBC News

The body camera footage is dramatic: a team of tactical officers bursts through the door of a Texas hotel in search of a girl who had been kidnapped.

Moments later, after her abductor had been handcuffed, the girl, 8, emerges from a laundry basket.

“Here she is,” an officer can be heard saying. “Got her, we got her, we got her.”

The footage, which was obtained Monday by NBC News, showed the frantic conclusion to a rescue effort that began several hours before.

On May 18, shortly before 7 pm local time, the girl had been walking down 6th Avenue in Fort Worth with her mother when a man in a Ford Sedan snatched her off the street. (NBC News is not naming the girl because she is a minor and the victim of sexual assault.)

The girl’s mother tried to fight off the man, Michael Webb, 51. But she was thrown from the vehicle as Webb drove off.

A hotel clerk in the Fort Worth suburb where Webb was staying called local authorities after reporting something suspicious in his room at WoodSprings Suites, said Erin Dooley , a spokeswoman for the United States Attorney of the Northern District of Texas.

But responding officers from the Forest Hill Police Department didn’t find the girl during a quick search of his room, Dooley said. So the police left.

Local pastor Jeff King spotted Webb’s car in the WoodSprings parking lot. Images of the Ford had been captured on a home security camera and publicized by Fort Worth police.

King called in a tip to police shortly around 2 a.m. on May 19.

A team of law enforcement officers from the Homeland Security Department , the FBI and the Fort Worth Police Department returned to the hotel room and found the girl in a laundry basket, Dooley said.

“They were very worried about her well-being and her physical well- being and whether or not she’s safe, ”recalled Erin Nealy Cox, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Texas.

“ When they find her, you hear how just emotional it is for everyone. They are just so happy and relieved that they have her, ”she added.

A jury found Webb guilty of kidnapping in September and he was sentenced to life in prison last Thursday.

Webb did not speak during his sentencing hearing, but the girl’s father said that if Webb “has to spend his days in a box until his final breaths, I suppose that will do.”