Dramatic Footage Shows Moment Police Rescued Kidnapped Fort Worth Girl, 8, from Hotel Room
Newly-released body camera footage shows the dramatic moment police beat down a hotel door in Texas to rescue an 8-year-old girl, who had been kidnapped in broad daylight.
The video from May, which was released by federal courts on Tuesday and obtained by CNN, shows Fort Worth police officers aggressively banging on the hotel door at WoodSprings Suites before ramming it down with their weapons in an effort to locate the young girl, who had been abducted by Michael Webb.
“Fort Worth Police Department! Open the door!” an officer can be heard yelling.
After successfully breaking down the door, Webb, 51, comes running out naked. He is soon apprehended by officers for the kidnapping.
Meanwhile, police enter the room and frantically search around for the girl. Following their disturbing discovery of blood on the bed, they locate the little girl hiding in a laundry basket.
“Hey! Here she is! We got her, we got her,” the officer tells his team in the video as he picks up the girl, covers her with a towel, and carries her out of the room.
The recovery of the little girl ended a harrowing episode that began when she was abducted around 6:40 p.m. on Saturday, May 18, while walking with her mother, Fort Worth police spokesman Buddy Calzada previously told PEOPLE.
According to Calzada, a car approached the pair and a man grabbed the girl. Her mother tried to jump inside the vehicle and save her, but the man pushed her out and drove off.
After her mother reported the kidnapping to officials, a family friend, Jeff King, scanned the Fort Worth streets and eventually spotted the vehicle police had described as part of the kidnapping parked outside of a WoodSpring Suites.
With officers already scouring the area nearby, “they were on the scene immediately,” said Calzada. “We connected with them so that [King] could point out the vehicle to us. Once he pointed out the vehicle, we felt that it was a solid lead and we investigated it further.”
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Officials inspected the vehicle and noticed that there was blood on the passenger seat, before entering the hotel room where she was being held at about 2:20 a.m. on Sunday, May 19.
It was the second time that authorities had been to Webb’s hotel room, as the first time when Forest Hill officers showed up around midnight, they did not spot the girl inside the laundry basket, CBS DFW reports.
“We went to the room of the registered owner of that vehicle and, through exigent circumstances, we were able to breach the door and locate [the girl] and Mr. Webb inside the room,” Calzada said.
The child was taken by an ambulance to a local hospital to be checked out and was later reunited with her family.
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Webb was arrested on a first-degree felony charge of aggravated kidnapping. At the time, he was being held in Tarrant County jail with a $100,000 bond, according to online inmate records.
In September, a two-day trial was held, ultimately leading to a federal jury convicting Webb of kidnapping, CBS DFW reports. He was eventually sentenced to life in federal prison.
During a three-hour interview conducted by the FBI, Webb confessed to the kidnapping. He said he fought off the girl’s mother on May 18 and then drove the child to a church parking lot.
Later that night, Webb admitted to bringing the girl to WoodSprings Suites hotel, holding her hostage inside the room, and threatening her when authorities arrived.
