Man Realizes He's Babysitting a Kidnap Victim

His sister is arrested in bizarre case in Washington state
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 16, 2015 6:29 PM CDT
Man Realizes He's Babysitting a Kidnap Victim
Ronnie Tran is safe and sound.   (Des Moines (Wash.) Police Department)

Another strange kidnapping story is in the news, but the good part is that the 2-year-old at the center of it is safe and sound. Beyond that, things get weird—a man babysitting the boy called 911 to report his whereabouts after seeing an Amber Alert. The key developments:

  • The kidnapping: On Tuesday, police say that Alyssa Chang, 46, and Vien Nguyen, 65, kidnapped toddler Ronnie Tran and his mother from their home in Des Moines, Wash. Chang is the girlfriend of the boy's father, and Nguyen is his paternal grandmother, reports ABC News.

  • The babysitter: After the boy's mother was tasered and tied up in a garage (she would eventually escape on her own, the Seattle Times reports), police say Chang brought the boy to her brother's home in Renton and innocently asked him to babysit. The brother, John Truong, tells KOMO-TV that he didn't know anything was amiss until the next morning when he saw the Amber Alert.
  • The surprise: "I'm eating my breakfast, I'm checking my Facebook, all of a sudden I see this Amber Alert for this child," he says. "And it looks like this child in my bed, and I'm like, 'Oh my God! What's going on?'" He called police, who soon tracked down his sister and Nguyen. Both face felony charges.
  • The bottom line: "There’s a lot of family dynamics involved," says a police official. "As far as why, we can only speculate."
(A girl missing 11 years returned to the US Wednesday.)

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