Hojun Choi – The Dallas Morning News
(TNS)
A girl who was kidnapped in Mesquite escaped her captor and was rescued last week after fire fighters saw her standing next to a light pole without her shoes near a fire station in Dallas, authorities say.
Doyle Tipton, 53, a registered sex offender, has been arrested, according to Mesquite police.
Tipton is facing an aggravated kidnapping charge, police said. It was unclear whether he had an attorney.
Investigators believe the girl ran away from home about midnight Thursday. At about 4:30 a.m., she was near the intersection of Gross Road and Ridgeview Street when a man in a red minivan asked her if she wanted a ride home, according to police.
The girl accepted the offer and got inside the vehicle, police said. Instead of taking the girl to her home, the man drove the child into Dallas and tried to “touch the child inappropriately,” which resulted in a “brief struggle,” police said in a Tuesday news release.
The vehicle then stopped near Interstate 20 and South Hampton Road in southeast Dallas and the man “removed the child from the vehicle,” according to police. The child then ran away and was seen by fire fighters at Dallas Fire Station #40, the release stated.
At about 6:30 a.m., firefighters saw the girl “standing outside the station next to a light pole with no shoes,” Jason Evans, a Dallas Fire-Rescue spokesman, said in an email Tuesday.
“They brought the young girl inside, performed a basic assessment and notified the police department,” Evans added.
Mesquite police investigators found surveillance camera footage showing the red minivan near the area where the girl was kidnapped, police said.
The girl also provided police information that helped authorities find the suspect vehicle and identify Tipton as a suspect, according to police.
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