An eight-year-old girl bravely fought off a kidnapper wearing a clown mask.
The child was in her bedroom in Sterling, Colorado, in the early hours of October 15, when the suspect, already wearing a cloth clown mask, entered the room intending to abduct her.
The Sterling police reported that the girl was attacked in her own bedroom but bravely fought off the assailant who subsequently fled the property before law enforcement reached the residence on Walnut Street in northern Colorado.
Officers told CBS Colorado the suspect blindfolded the girl and when she fought back he hit her in the head and tried to choke her. The man then allegedly ran off with the girl’s phone before police officers arrived at the scene.
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Following the terrifying ordeal, the girl received medical attention for cuts and bruises sustained during the attempted kidnapping. Thankfully her injuries were not life-threatening.
Through a combination of digital, forensic, and physical evidence, the police successfully identified and apprehended the alleged perpetrator. On October 19, Thomas Gallegos, aged 56, was taken into custody and faces charges including first-degree burglary, second-degree assault, second-degree attempted kidnapping, third-degree assault, and child abuse.
Incidents involving children are particularly worrying as they are some of the most vulnerable people in our communities.
In a seperate incident a Florida woman is in jail after allegedly contacting a 10-year-old via Roblox, a popular multiplayer online game, and instructing him to kill a newborn baby and the adults he and the baby were living with.
Tara Alexis Sykes was arrested last week and charged with a count of attempted murder while engaged in aggravated child abuse, the authorities said, noting that the case is one of the most heinous and strange they’d seen before.
The 36-year-old mother allegedly met the boy on the gaming platform and struck up a chat with him via its chat component, though how the conversation turned to infanticide remains unclear.
Nevertheless, the mother allegedly instructed the boy to kill the 2-month-old he was living with, then to slit the throats of both adults in the home before setting the place ablaze to destroy evidence.
Investigators were called by the Gulf Coast Kid’s House, a child advocacy center, after reports of a 2-month-old sustaining “serious injuries after being dropped on the kitchen floor by a 10-year-old,” a news release from the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office said. The incident reportedly occurred on Thursday.
The sheriff’s office went on to detail the numerous heinous ways in which Sykes instructed the child to commit infanticide, writing, “Sykes instructed the 10-year-old to drown the infant in the bathtub, burn the infant with scalding water and drop the infant on the floor to kill the infant. Additionally, Sykes had instructed the 10-year-old on how to kill the adults the 10-year-old was temporarily living with by cutting their throats with a knife while they slept and burning their house by dousing bed sheets with aerosol spray and setting them on fire.”
