California elementary school aide credited with stopping attempted abduction

– A teacher’s aide in California foiled an attempted kidnapping as she drove to school.

On Friday morning, Sandra Ferguson was driving to work at Antioch’s Sutter Elementary School when she noticed something seemed amiss.

Ferguson saw a the girl in the front seat of a truck with an unknown man. She recognized the girl as a student at her school, but she didn’t recognize the man.

“She said, ‘No, he’s a friend.’ I said, ‘No, he’s not your friend!” Ferguson decided not to take any chances. The girl, who has not been identified, was not injured.

“I said, ‘Sweetheart, is that your dad?'” Ferguson told KGO.

Ferguson said the girl looked afraid so she asked the girl if everything was okay. Ferguson called the police.

Reports suggest that Salazar, of Brentwood, Calif., did not try to run away when the police apprehended him.

KABC The teacher’s aide noticed the girl in a man’s auto, blocked it with her own vehicle and ordered her to get out.

The girl wasn’t hurt.

Santiago was arrested and booked into the Contra Costa County Jail on suspicion of kidnapping. He allegedly pulled up next to her, opened the passenger door, and pulled her inside the vehicle. The girl was sitting in a vehicle with a man Ferguson didn’t know or recognize as a family member of the student.

“Thankfully she was a guardian angel, preventing something awful from happening”, school principal Debra Harrington said.