Centre Street and Seneca Avenue, where a registered sex offended allegedly tried to kidnap an 11-year-old girl. (Google Maps)
Dec. 17, 2018 By Laura Hanrahan
Two Good Samaritans are being hailed for intervening in the would-be kidnapping of an 11-year-old girl by a registered sex offender in Ridgewood over the weekend.
The 11-year-old was walking along Center Street at around 8 a.m. on Dec. 14 to a weekend program at I.S. 77 when a man in a white 2002 Honda Civic called out to her, police say.
She ignored the man and kept walking, but he followed her and eventually used his car to block her path near Seneca Avenue.
The man, now identified as 40-year-old Glendale resident Relyn Estrada, tried to force the young girl into the back seat of his car.
Reports say nearby resident Alexander Salas heard the girl’s screams and ran outside in his underwear with a baseball bat to confront Estrada while his wife called the police. Salas’s neighbor, Edwin Gonzalez, saw what was happening and also grabbed a bat and went outside.
But Estrada allegedly pulled out a bat of his own and began swinging at the two men while holding onto his victim.
“We just kept on talking to him so he can focus on us and not the little girl so he wouldn’t hit her,” Gonzalez said to ABC7 News.
The young girl kicked and screamed, and used her iPhone to send a distress signal to the police through the phone’s emergency SOS, Gonzalez said. Estrada eventually let go of the girl once the police arrived.
Estrada, who was registered as a sex offender after sexually assaulting a woman in 2001, was charged with kidnapping, acting in a manner injurious to a child, and failure to report change of address as a sex offender, records show.
He will appear in Queens Criminal Court in March.
The young girl has since been reunited with her family and is doing well.
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3 Comments
Wow.
I am glad that the girl was saved. Thanks to these good Samaritans. This neighorhood attracts lately all kind of perverts and kriminals.
Where is the other guy didn’t they say 2 guys?