Video: Kidnap Victim Escapes Trunk of Moving Car
An armed suspect forced the woman into the trunk of her car after demanding money.
A 25-year-old woman was walking into her apartment outside Birmingham, Alabama on Tuesday when a man approached her, flashing a gun and demanding money. When she refused, he grabbed her wallet and cell phone and forced her into the trunk of her fourth-generation Nissan Altima, driving to multiple locations and stopping so the suspect could presumably use her ATM card to get money.
It's like a scene from an action thriller: our heroine has been kidnapped, forced into the trunk of her own car by the evil henchman, and driven off to a fate unknown. But there's a reason this particular henchman hasn't graduated to supervillain status just yet—he's too dumb to know that every car sold in America since 2001 has a safety release inside the trunk to save kids who get accidentally stuck and, yes, the occasional kidnap victim. And so what happens next, while unsurprising in the worlds of James Bond and Ethan Hunt, probably shocked the hell out of everyone involved.
It was on one of those stops, at a gas station miles away from her apartment, that the events caught on camera unfolded. We see the man pull up into a parking spot and enter the store, heading straight for the ATM. He appears to have trouble with it—the store owner told Alabama.com he was trying to withdraw too much money and he suspected something was wrong, so he told the man to leave and try again later.
As the suspect backs out and starts to leave the parking lot, the trunk suddenly pops open and a woman tumbles out onto the ground. She immediately runs inside the store to ask for help, and can be seen near the end of the clip clutching the store owner's shotgun for protection.
Birmingham Police are still looking for the suspect.
