8 Hours After Girl Snatched From Street: 'We Got Her!'

Michael Webb, 51, will serve life in prison for kidnapping
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 19, 2019 9:20 AM CST

Police officers storm a Texas hotel room with guns drawn before the moment of relief comes. "We got her! We got her!" an officer says as an 8-year-old kidnapping victim emerges from a laundry basket where she'd been told to keep quiet on threat of violence against her parents. Michael Webb, 51, had snatched the girl off the streets of Fort Worth as she walked with her mother on the evening of May 18, reports NBC News, which obtained the footage of the girl's rescue. It was the second time officers had searched the room at WoodSprings Suites. A Forest Hill police officer, later fired, had found nothing suspicious in the room after a tip from a hotel clerk, reports WFAA.

A team of officers, including Homeland Security and the FBI, returned to search the room after a pastor spotted Webb's car—seen in security camera footage of the kidnapping—in WoodSprings' parking lot around 2am on May 19. Police, who described blood on the passenger seat of the car, said the girl had been sexually assaulted. Webb later admitted to hiding the girl in the laundry basket. "I told her if she said anything that I would do something to her parents, and if I was in jail I would have my friends ... do it," he said. It took less than 10 minutes for a jury to convict Webb of kidnapping following a two-day trial in September, per KLTV. He was sentenced Thursday to life in federal prison. (More kidnapping stories.)

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