New York Police arrested a man Saturday who tried to abduct a 5-year-old boy in broad daylight on a Queens borough street Friday as he was walking with his mother, Dolores Diaz Lopez.
Mother saves son from kidnapping in broad daylight in New York City
The suspect was identified by authorities as James McGonagle, 24, who was charged with attempted kidnapping and reckless endangerment, among other charges.
The arrest was made after police released a video of the crime, in which Diaz Lopez is seen walking with his three children in the street.
At that moment, McGonagle suddenly gets out of a parked car and takes the youngest, who was walking slightly ahead of his mother, in his arms.
They managed to pull him out
The perpetrator quickly put the child in the back seat of the vehicle, while the mother and her two siblings ran to the car and tried to grab the victim through the window, which was down, and managed to pull him out a few seconds later, before McGonagle could make his getaway.
UPDATE: A 24-year-old male has been arrested and charged with:
– Attempted Kidnapping
– Reckless Endangerment
– Acting in a Manner Injurious to a Child less than 17 https://t.co/WXxXyk5JEq— NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) July 17, 2021
According to local media, the alleged perpetrator was identified at Brookdale Hospital, where he went for medical assistance for an unrelated matter.
Diaz Lopez explained to local media that she was walking with her children to go visit her husband at his workplace on Friday afternoon when a man grabbed her son Jacob.
The mother detailed that the boy initially remained sitting on the seat of the vehicle, but when she and her children began begging to be released, the minor got up and was able to reach in and pull him out the window, at which point the perpetrator fled the scene in his car.
“I don’t know why that happened. I have never seen such people in my life,” the woman said in an interview with the abc7 television channel, in which she explained that it was her instinct as a mother that led her to react that way.
