Text Message Leads To Girl's Rescue

Kidnapped Teen Uses Attacker's Cell Phone From Underground Bunker

(CBS/AP)  The text message from the missing 14-year-old South Carolina girl to her mother was a ray of hope.

"I was given some hope back that she was OK and we could get to her," said her mother, Madeline, on CBS News' The Early Show Monday.

It was the tech-savvy skills of the 21st century teen that kept the girl alive, reports CBS News correspondent Jim Acosta. Kidnapped from her school bus stop in remote South Carolina, police say she was in a 15-foot-deep bunker that Vinson Filyaw dug out of the ground and stocked with food. It had a hand-dug privy with toilet paper, a camp stove and shelves made with cut branches and canvas.

"You know, you think you have seen it all and when you see something like this, it's hard to describe, it's hard to imagine," Capt. David Thomley of the Kershaw Co. Sheriff's Office said on The Early Show. "And I have tried many times to describe it but it's difficult. It's nothing I have ever seen before."

Later Monday, Kershaw County Magistrate Roderick Todd denied bond for Filyaw, saying the suspect was a flight risk and "significant threat" to the community.

The hideout was booby-trapped. But police say when Filyaw fell asleep the girl was able to grab his cell phone. She text-messaged her mother, "Hey, Mom, I'm being held in a hole."

"I was scared. I knew it was her. I was thankful," Madeline told The Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith.

Filyaw surrendered Sunday morning to police as he walked along Interstate 20 near Columbia, about five miles from where investigators found the teenager a day earlier.

He was armed with a hunting knife, an air pistol and a taser gun, reports Acosta. Investigators say he had just tried to carjack a woman.

He was charged with first-degree criminal sexual conduct, kidnapping, possession of an incendiary device and impersonating an officer, and was being held at the Kershaw County jail.

The text message was the break in the case, Thomley said.

"We asked for assistance from the United States Marshals Services that provided us services that tracked the tower, where the text message was sent from, and through triangulation, they were able to put us in a spot consistent with where the text message said she would be located," Thomley said.

The searchers heard her calling for help, and it then took them only a few minutes to find her.

CBS News and other news media are not using the girl's last name because police have identified her as a victim of sexual assault.

[bennylaval]

Dawson tragedy-the comment against me is yet another in countless examples of how the left likes to be abusive, intolerant, insensitive, and idiotic. Like I often say "liberal left" is an oxymoron. And CBS News does not want to do anything about it even though it violates their rules of engagement.
There should be gun control but, like I said before, it doesn't make any difference in cases like these. Armed security guards would probably be more effective. And the Goth movement is largely responsible for this tragedy as well as the Columbine tragedy and the triple murder in Ontario. It was in that province where the 1st school shooting occured in the '70s, not in the US. Anastasia was the most wonderful, beautiful, and special person there could be and I love her very much. And I can't think of her as gone.

Sometimes the 'fear of the unknown' prevents people from talking and asking about a subject. Euthanasia of sexual offenders is one such topic. We should not euthanize these criminals to save money or simply for convenience of needing to store and feed them in our already overcrowded prisons either. We shouldn't euthanize sexual predators simply to protect our children from heinous harm. The majority of sexual predators are repeat offenders. We should euthanize sexual predators to forever purge them from society. Even after castration many seek hormones to allow them to continue destroying the lives of others. Chemical euthanasia is simply an anesthetic overdose which causes no pain to the recipient and works very quickly.

[osidebear]

It's always a terrible tragedy when something like this occurs, and we as a society should do all we can within the law to prevent and punish such actions. However, there is no "epidemic" of child-snatching going on in this country, as ausdale seems to think there is. Rather, there is an epidemic of over-reporting cases such as this, leading the American public to ever-higher levels of fear. Fear sells papers, sends TV news ratings higher, and allows pandering politicians and "journalists" to promote their own cynical agendas.

[ydion9961]

Our children are the most presious people in our lives. I agree, kidnappers should be locked up forever. Unfortunately, the violators have laws to protect them that are so outdated.

We need to get lawmakers that are willing to change the laws.

[ydion9961]

These people need to be locked up for ever. Our children are the most presious loved ones we have. I know kidnappers have great laws on their side, but we need better ones on ours.

What's the matter?, no one has anything to say about this story?, I mean the Pope reads somthing out of a book, and nobody can say nothing good of it!. Yet we here on earth have a terrable epidemic on our hands, is anybody's child safe anywhere?,is there any way to stop this?. This is now an everyday ordeal in to many peoples lives young and old, male or female, white or black, here or there, it just does'nt make sense!!!...