HOUSTON – A west Houston mother jumped into crime-fighting mode after she says a man tried to kidnap her 13-year-old daughter while she walked home from school.
“She’s crying. She says, ‘This guy just tried to pick me up. He asked me if I wanted a ride and he told me to get into his car,’” said Fatima Bangura as she described what happened to her daughter.
The attempted kidnapping happen on April 15 on Morton Road near Greenhouse.
Kadija Kwemah, a seventh-grader, said she was leaving Mayde Creek Junior High School when a man in a white Dodge Ram tried to coerce her into his truck.
“He kind of blocked me, blocked my path, and kept asking me more questions,” said Kwemah. “I told him my age to see if he would leave me alone, but he just kept following me.”
Kwemah did not get into the car, but instead, called her mother who rushed to pick her up.
“I was scared and I hyperventilated,” said 13-year-old Kwemah.
The mother and daughter called the police and then proceeded to follow the driver so he could not getaway.
Bangura said she was broadcasting the entire incident on Facebook Live in case anything happened.
“All I thought was ‘That guy just tried to basically ruin my life, and he needs to be caught so that way he won’t do it to someone else,’” Bangura told KPRC 2.
Bangura shared the video with KPRC 2.
“Facebook, I’m following this guy who tried to kidnap my daughter. The police are on their way and you will not get away with this,” Bangura could be heard saying in the video. “You in trouble now, sucka.”
Bangura and her daughter followed the man for 15 minutes until deputies with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office caught up to him.
“One more bad guy off the street. I made sure of that tonight,” she said during the Livestream.
Deputies detained the man, but released him because they said he did not use physical force or enforceable language.
That is not sitting well with Bangura.
“Force meant that he would have succeeded, and if he would have succeeded, I may not have seen my child again,” she said. “This is just this incident, what about the next one or the one before that you don’t even know.”
Katy ISD sent a letter out to parents to be on the lookout for a man in a white Dodge Ram.
The mother said her daughter no longer walks home from school.
The man in the Dodge Ram told deputies that all he was doing was offering the girl a ride home.
KPRC 2 is not releasing the man’s name because he was not charged with a crime.