Girl, 16, Snatched Off Street as Mother Fought Kidnappers, Video Shows

A mother and her 16-year-old daughter were walking down a quiet street when out of nowhere a beige, four-door sedan stopped, and two men forcibly dragged the teenager, Karol Sanchez, into the vehicle.

The kidnapping happened Monday around 11:20 p.m. in the Melrose section of the Bronx.

On Tuesday morning, police released footage from a security camera near the scene and asked for the public’s help in solving the crime. Investigators have yet to determine a motive for the kidnapping.

Police said the unsuspecting mother and her daughter were out for a stroll Monday night when the sedan, occupied by four men clad in black, stopped in front of 745 Eagle Ave. Two of the men, believed to be in their 20s, then got out of the vehicle and snatched the teenager.

When the mother tried to intervene, she was pushed to the ground, police said. She was not seriously injured.

The sedan immediately fled east on East 156th Street, police said.

Sanchez, who is 5 feet, 5 inches tall and weighs about 150 pounds, was last seen wearing a dark blue short jacket, a white sweater, bluejeans and black sneakers, police said.

A family friend, Destiny David, 20, said news of the kidnapping reverberated in the Sanchez family’s close-knit Honduran community.

“We all know each other,” David said over the phone. “We don’t know why they took her. We just want her to be found soon.”

The details of the kidnapping were so shocking that the Police Department’s chief of patrol, Fausto Pichardo, asked the public for help identifying the men and locating Sanchez. “Have you seen Karol Sanchez?” Pichardo wrote on Twitter.

Police Commissioner Dermot Shea also used Twitter to publicize the security camera video that captured the attack. The department is offering a reward of up to $2,500 for information about the kidnapping.

Police issued an Amber Alert on Tuesday.

Sanchez’s kidnapping rattled a city still grappling with the deadly stabbing of Tessa Majors, a Barnard College freshman. The attacks on the two young women come at a time when the city is experiencing record low crime rates not seen since the 1950s.

In the Bronx neighborhood where Sanchez was taken, which is patrolled by the Police Department’s 40th Precinct, no murder or rape incidents have been reported in the last two years. But felony assaults increased from eight in 2018 to 13 so far this year, according to police data.

Majors was walking through Morningside Park in Manhattan last week when she was attacked by three people and stabbed several times, police said.

Majors, who was from Virginia and played in a rock band, staggered up a flight of stairs, making it out of the park.

A campus security guard came across a severely wounded Majors sometime later. A 13-year-old boy implicated himself in the attack last week and was expected to face charges Tuesday. Police said at least two other teenagers may have taken part in the crime.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .