Two Dallas-area teenagers helped rescue a kidnapped woman who pleaded through a car window by mouthing the words “help me,” the pals say.
Best friends Aaron Arias, 19, and Jamal Harris, 17, were out for a drive in their hometown of Seagoville, Texas, when Harris noticed an attractive blond-haired woman in the car stopped next to them at a stop sign.
“I was like, ‘Oh man, look at this lady, she’s hot!’ ” Harris told KHOU-TV. “And then we made eye contact and I see this serious expression on her face. And I read her lips and she was like, ‘Help me.’ ”
Arias got a view of the woman as alleged abductor Charles Atkins Lewis Jr., took off fast — and she touched the back windshield of the vehicle, he says.
“That’s when I knew we had to go after them,” he said. The teens dialed 911 and followed the kidnapper.
“He was driving crazy, swerving, everything,” Arias said. “And at one point he started turning on and off his lights, so we knew that he knew he was being followed.”
After a 20-minute pursuit they arrived in the city of Kaufman, where waiting cops stopped Lewis’ car and arrested him.
The freed woman, who was allegedly abducted from a downtown Dallas street at gunpoint, tearfully thanked the teens.
“She was beyond grateful,” Arias said.
“You don’t need a cape to be a hero,” Harris said of the Aug. 22 incident. “You just have to be yourself and just respond.”