Watch the Moment a Kidnap Victim Makes Her Big Escape

She popped out of a car trunk at an Alabama gas station
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 16, 2017 2:42 PM CDT

A frightening ordeal for a kidnapped woman came to an end at an Alabama gas station late Tuesday night, and her escape was caught on tape. Sgt. Bryan Shelton says that the 25-year-old was abducted outside her Birmingham apartment around 10:30pm, with the suspect throwing her in the trunk of his car after she said she didn't have the money he demanded, NBC News and AL.com report. Shelton says the suspect grabbed her phone and wallet before he started driving, and he stopped at a gas station a few miles away, seemingly to try to use her bank card to take out cash while she remained in the trunk. "He was not right … there was something going on with him," station owner Yosef Alsabah tells AL.com, noting the suspect asked him for help with the ATM in frustration when it wouldn't give him more than the daily maximum.

The suspect eventually left, but as he drove away, surveillance video shows the trunk pop open and the woman roll out onto the ground before dashing inside. Once she told Alsabah what was going on, he locked the door and called 911. At one point, which can be seen on the video, the panicked woman even held onto Alsabah's shotgun, though he tried to tell her she was safe. Alsabah says that the woman had been cut during her abduction and that a relative brought her to get checked out by medical staff. The Birmingham Police, meanwhile, say the suspect is still at large and tweeted a photo of him to ask for the public's help in tracking him down. (A North Carolina woman escaped from a car trunk thanks to a flip phone.)

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