A motorist called police in Kentucky after seeing the girl repeat a gesture “known to represent domestic violence.”
It is a gesture that may have saved his life. On Thursday, November 4, a kidnapped teenage girl was spotted in the US state of Kentucky, near London, thanks to TikTok.
A driver called police after noticing “a female passenger making known hand gestures on the TikTok platform to represent domestic violence,” Laurel’s sheriff’s office said in a statement Saturday.
61-year-old man arrested
The latter specified that the young girl seemed “in distress” and that the driver was an older man than her, specifies the office of the sheriff of Laurel. The 911 caller then followed the silver Toyota while investigators arrived and could stop the car at the highway exit.
On board were James Herbert Brick, 61, and a 16-year-old girl who was reported missing by her parents two days earlier in Asheville, North Carolina. The teenager said she had traveled with the man through North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio.
A discreet cry for help
In the hope of obtaining help, she made a sign of the hand whose function is to call for help in cases of domestic violence in particular. This sign, which has circulated a lot on the Tiktok app, allows victims of violence to discreetly report their distress.
Invented by the Canadian Women’s Foundation in 2020, it consists of raising your hand, palm outward, folding your thumb over the palm and then your fingers down. Thanks to this gesture, recognized by a motorist, James Herbert Brick was charged with kidnapping and possession of child pornography images. And the young girl he had kidnapped finally returned home.
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