"You're not the father of this child," the suspect told the girl's dad before allegedly snatching her; the child's mom then pulled a knife to his throat, threatening to "end your life," before a police pursuit.
A 2-year-old girl is safe after her parents thwarted an abduction attempt this week in Tarrant County, Texas, police say.
On Monday, Paige and Carlos Ortiz were driving home from Walmart when she noticed a blue truck following them. Though her husband reportedly brushed off her concerns, the man is then said to have approached Carlos while they were unloading groceries from the vehicle in their own driveway.
According to the couple, the man, later identified as Steven Bayse by law enforcement, began asking Carlos about his truck. “He started saying some other things that threw red flags up to me,” Carlos told NBC Dallas-Fort Worth. “He starts saying things like, ‘That could be like Shelby. Oh, that’s my truck.’ Probably because he had a similar truck to mine. Just a different year, make, and model.”
Then things took a turn.
“He started seeing my daughter out in the front yard. He was like, ‘Oh that’s your daughter?’ I was like, ‘Yes. It is,'” Carlos continued, saying Bayse then got out of his car. “I didn’t think much of it, because he’s probably just trying to say hi. Out of nowhere, he just scoops her up and starts heading back to his truck.”
“He told my husband, ‘You’re not the father of this child’ and just started to bolt away,” Paige told the Star-Telegram. “And my husband was right on his trail, like trying to like reach out for him and grab our daughter.”
Security camera footage from across the street shows, what appears to be Bayse, pick up the child, before he started carrying the girl back to his own truck. Paige — spotting the man lift up her child and her husband attempting to stop the abduction — then grabbed her phone to call 911 and a knife from the kitchen before running outside.
Additional footage shared with WFAA shows the moment she confronted the man from just outside the driver’s side window. “Let go of my daughter, now! You better get your hands off my daughter! He’s trying to kidnap my daughter, call the police!” she shouts to the suspect and neighbors.
“‘You better put my daughter down or I will end your life,'” she told WFAA she said to the man, adding, “I will do whatever it takes to ensure my family and my daughter are safe.”
“I was holding his arm then my wife, she had one arm on our kid. The other arm with the knife to his neck. Eventually, she was able to pull her out of his arms and runs inside,” Carlos recalled. “I couldn’t think of anything else. I just was like, I need to hold him off and my wife needs to pull her off and go.”
The suspect then sped away, with Paige still holding a knife in the air as he drove off.
According to the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office, authorities were able to track down the suspect at his home after Paige supplied them with the make, model and tag number of the vehicle. They attempted to speak with him, but he “refused to stop,” say cops, and led them on a pursuit.
“He stopped several times, acting as if he would surrender and then continue running from deputies,” reads a press release. “At one point during the chase, deputies attempted to conduct a high-risk stop, when Bayse was stopped at a red light. Again, he drove off and struck three patrol vehicles and almost struck a TCSO deputy.”
He was arrested after pulling into a grocery store parking lot and is currently being held in Tarrant County Jail on charges of kidnapping, evading arrest or detention with a vehicle and aggravated assault against a public servant.
His bond has been set at $125,000.
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