Having your child go missing is one of the most frightening things a parent can go through.
What’s often worse than all the horrible scenarios going through your head is the uncertainty of it all – will they ever come back? Are they safe?
This is exactly what a couple in the US went through after their 16-year-old daughter went missing last week.
And if not for something the girl learned on TikTok, she may never have been found.
Girl Saved from Kidnappers After She Used Hand Signals She Learned from TikTok
The girl had been reported missing last Tuesday (2 Nov) in North Carolina, a state in the southeastern region of the United States.
Two days later, a driver passing by a silver Toyota car in Kentucky noticed that a girl inside the car was making a hand signal that looked like this:
Fortunately, the driver recognised that this was a distress signal used by people who are being abused to tell someone they are in trouble.
Thanks to the driver’s 911 call, law enforcement officers were dispatched and the vehicle was intercepted. A 61-year-old man named James Herbert Brick was later arrested and charged with unlawful imprisonment and possession of sexual material pertaining to a minor.
It appears that the girl and the driver knew each other and that she initially went with the man willingly at first, but later got scared.
The man had taken her to Ohio to visit his relatives, and left with her after they realized she had been reported missing.
The girl had learned the hand signal after it went viral on TikTok. It’s meant to alert someone in times of distress, especially domestic violence, without the abuser knowing. it had become popular on the social media platform last year, when there was a rise in cases of domestic violence.
The victim first holds up their hand, with the palm facing outward, and tucks their thumb into their hand. They then close their fingers over the thumb:
This allows victims to alert others to their abuse using non-verbal cues.
As Deputy Sheriff Gilbert Acciardo said, if it weren’t for this simple hand gesture, who knows what could have happened?
“That hand gesture was everything. Had that not been…transmitted by the young lady, had there not been someone out there that knew how to interpret what she was doing, then who knows? We might not have had a good resolution on this,” he said.
“We think that motorists and law enforcement agencies nationwide should be aware of this and know what the signal means, and I think it can be quite useful in the future.”
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Featured Image: Canadian Women’s Foundation