4 Girls Were Attacked. They Fought Back With Fists, Coffee

Would-be kidnapper foiled by brave tweens and teens
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 15, 2018 9:30 AM CDT
Updated Aug 15, 2018 9:35 AM CDT
There's a Brave Tale Behind Alleged Abductor's Coffee Stains
Bruce Hipkins and his stained T-shirt.   (Tuscola County Sheriff's Office)

A group of girls foiled a kidnapping attempt in Michigan by throwing hot coffee on a male suspect who took off with authorities in hot pursuit. Bruce Hipkins, 22, was arrested on charges of unlawful imprisonment, assault, battery, and criminal sexual conduct minutes after police say he assaulted four girls as they left a gas station convenience store in Millington on Friday, per ABC News. "He said, 'You're coming with me.' And like, he grabbed my face," 11-year-old Allison Eickhoff tells WJRT. "Seeing that your little sister was going to get taken is very scary," says her 13-year-old sister, Lauren, who fought back with the only weapons she had: her fists, and a hot coffee. "I grabbed my drink and chucked it at his head," then "punched him in the head," she says.

Her companions, ages 12 and 14, joined in kicking and punching the man until he let go of Allison. He then grabbed another girl by the hair but "was again kicked and hit by the girls until he let her go and fled on foot," police say. Hipkins was arrested after the girls called for help from a nearby inn. Police say surveillance video shows him watching the girls inside the convenience store before following them out. They'd crossed a street to avoid him in what Millington Police Chief Jason Oliver calls the first of many right moves. "They did what they needed to do," he says. Hipkins is currently in Tuscola County Jail on a $250,000 bond. Per USA Today, he's wearing a coffee-stained T-shirt in a booking photo. (A gas station attendant helped save a kidnapping victim in California.)

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