An 8-year-old boy is being hailed a hero this week after his quick thinking led him and his 10-year-old sister to escape a potential kidnapping.
According to the Middletown Division of Police, the two children, 8-year-old Chance Blue and 10-year-old Skylar Weaver were traveling to the hospital Thursday with their great-grandmother, 69-year-old Nita Coburn when the incident took place.
Coburn, who says she was driving her sick daughter to Atrium Medical Center in Middletown, Ohio, parked outside of the Emergency Room entrance when they arrived. She exited the driver’s side of the vehicle and helped walk her daughter to the entrance, believing she’d locked the car behind her. The children remained in the back seat, police said.
Not 10 seconds after leaving the vehicle, 24-year-old Dalvir Singh jumped into the driver’s seat and took off with the children still in the back.
“I started hearing the kids screaming and I ran to them,” Coburn tells WCPO. “All I could see was my great-grandbabies in the back seat. … Every time I think about it I want to cry.”
Video shows young siblings’ close call with suspected carjacker. @ErielleReshef has more on their jaw-dropping escape. pic.twitter.com/CsrjIwk6FN
— Good Morning America (@GMA) April 29, 2019
“The little boy opened the door to escape and the little girl started to jump out also but the man grabbed the hoodie of the little girl not allowing her to leave,” police wrote on Facebook Friday. “As she tried to get away, her little brother grabbed hold of her and pulled her away from the kidnapper and they both tumbled out of the vehicle as it was moving.”
“I was acting in the moment because I didn’t want my sister to get hurt,” Chance told Good Morning America.
While all of this is happening, Coburn had begun chasing after the vehicle on the driver’s side — unaware that her grandchildren had escaped on the passenger side of the vehicle. Harrowing footage from security cameras at the medical center [shows] her clinging to the car until she was forced to let go as it accelerated to higher rates of speed.
Thankfully, officers in the area stopped Singh several blocks down the road and detained him. He is charged with two counts of kidnapping, felonious assault and grand theft.
“This little guy is a hero. No question,” said Chief Rodney Muterspaw in a statement. “He pulled his sister out of the car with no concern for his own safety. That is incredible at his age.”
The Middletown Division of Police said it plans to formally recognize the boy’s heroic actions at a later date.
