Dramatic Swim To Safety Ends 29-Day Kidnapping Ordeal For Minnesota Teen

ALEXANDRIA, MN — A 15-year-old girl who was repeatedly raped and abused during nearly a month of captivity in various rural Minnesota locations made a dramatic escape, swimming across a lake and flagging down a farmer for help before helping police arrest three men now charged with kidnapping and assaulting her. The teen hadn’t been seen since she disappeared from her home in Alexandria, Minnesota, on Aug. 8.

The three men — two of them ages 32 and 31 from Carlos, Minnesota, and a 20-year-old from Mankato, Minnesota — were arrested Tuesday after her swim to freedom. The teen played a key role in their arrests, Alexandria Police Chief Rick Wyffels said at a Wednesday news conference.

One of the men, a family acquaintance, “tricked” the teen into getting into the car by saying he had a “family situation” and took her to his home in Carlos, where he “tied her up with zip ties and then he, his roommate and friend over the next several weeks assaulted her with weapons,” Wyffels said at the news conference, which was broadcast on Facebook.

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At times during the ordeal, the teen was locked in a closet in the mobile home in Carlos, was given mainly fast-food meals and was moved from place to place, including a cornfield, until her captors moved her to a Grant County location, Wyffel said. When she made her dash to safety, she knocked on doors in the area but got no response, then decided to swim across the lake, he said, according to a report in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

The farmer she flagged down recognized her from various bulletins about a $7,000 reward for information about her whereabouts. He was “able to name her before she was able to say any words because he knew what this story was all about,” the police chief said.

The farmer had left his job to get something he had forgotten at his house when he saw the soaking-wet teen walking out of grasslands behind his house. He initially thought a deer was stirring but recognized her as the missing Alexandria teen as she ran toward him, he told WCCO-TV. The television station didn’t name the farmer, who asked for anonymity because he feared for his safety.

He scooped her up and was driving her to authorities when she saw one of her accused abductors, the 20-year-old, in a vehicle on the highway, Wyffels said. The man was arrested, the chief said, and a statewide bulletin was broadcast for the other two suspects, who were arrested by a state trooper in Glenwood.

The investigation is continuing, and police are asking farmers to report any damage to their cornfields from vehicles driving through them and for anglers and others in the Thompson Lake area to report any clothing they may see floating on or near the shoreline, the Valley News reported. During her swim to safety, the teen lost her shoes and pants, police said.

The teen has been reunited with her mother.

Photo via Shutterstock