A young woman from London is being hailed as a hero after a video went viral in which she thwarted a kidnapping and saved a little girl’s life.
Ashanti is a 20 year-old woman from London whose 11 year-old sister Zian when she saw a scene that had her calling home immediately.
“Zian ( 11-years-old ), was on the way to school when she noticed a guy with his hands over a girls mouth,” their mother Christine told The Guardian. “She called home and said, ‘I think I just saw a girl get kidnapped by a guy.”
Without hesitating, Ashanti leapt to action. She ran outside and quickly caught sight of the man and the girl. Though she was putting her own life in danger, Ashanti confronted the man, filming on her phone as she told him to “let her go” and asked”what are you doing with her?”
“We didn’t know whether he had a weapon on him, but we didn’t care, as all we knew is that it was a child and that we needed to help her,” Christine explained afterwards.
The man tried to get Ashanti to go away, but she refused to give up. Finally, he let go of the girl and ran away himself.
This happened in Mitcham area this morning ..
More information here 👇🏻👇🏻https://t.co/0Qwe3UXdKI pic.twitter.com/YFXdjSjWgL
— London & UK Street News (@CrimeLdn) November 3, 2020
After the video went viral, social media users were able to identify the suspect, and he is now in custody.
“I woke up the kids and told them that he had been charged and we all broke down,” Christine said of learning he’d been apprehended. “We want to thank everybody for the love and the care- everybody working together has made this special even though its emotional.”
Ashanti has been overwhelmed by all of the support she has received since this incident.
“I wish I could thank you all individually, I’m not a hero Im just glad I had the courage to follow through,” she said. “My little sister is the real hero here, she’s 11 years old and was able to notice that something was not right and called me straight away. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to save that little girl.”
Just wanna say a big thank you to @ktrap19 for personally just dropping this to my house, like I said already I only did what I thought needed to be done, we have to protect all our young females🤍 pic.twitter.com/zfCG5mC6h2
— Shan (@shansdeya) November 3, 2020
Thank God Ashanti and her family were there to save the day!
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