College Student's Life is Saved by "Sharing" Her "Location"! Horrifying Kidn
On a night in September 2017, 21-year-old Jaila Gladden was making a midnight run to the grocery store, like many of us are known to do. She bought her items and proceeded to her car, parked in full view of passersby, not knowing that her night was about to take a horrible and frightening turn. As she reached her car a man, wielding a knife, approached her. He pressed the knife into her stomach and forced her into her vehicle. You can watch the terrifying moment caught on a store surveillance camera below.
The story continues:
"He climbed into the driver's seat, and started to drive toward Atlanta, which was 50 miles away.Before they got there, they made a stop; the man pulled over into the back of an abandoned church, told her to take off her clothes, and raped her, telling her there was 'no purpose in crying' as she begged him to let her go."
Once that horrible act was finished, the assailant told Gladden that he was going to drive them both to Michigan and wanted to rob a gas station on their way there. He told her to keep an eye out for a good potential gas station and that's when Gladden took action.
"That's when Jaila had her bright idea. She convinced the man that she needed her phone to look up the locations of gas stations and help him navigate there. Surprisingly, he gave it to her — but she took no chances.She turned the brightness of the screen down as far as it would go so as not to draw attention, then opened up a text to her boyfriend, Tamir Bryant.She then used her iPhone's 'share my location' feature to send him her GPS data.'It was the most logical thing to do,' she said.Because she didn't want the man to catch her, Jaila was cautious with her texts, firing off only short messages. When Tamir asked why she was all the way in Atlanta, she replied, 'Kid napped.'
Read their messages for yourself and marvel at her quick thinking.
'I immediately realized it was serious,' he told BuzzFeed later. 'She would never play like that. She would never say that for no reason.'
Unsuspecting, the kidnapper nonetheless took the phone away and forced Jaila into the trunk of the car during his attempted (but unsuccessful) gas station robbery.
When he wanted to try again at a grocery store, Jaila again said she needed her phone to guide him. Once there, she was forced into the trunk without her phone once more.
Jaila was only able to fire off a quick line at a time, telling her boyfriend that they were in her car and she didn't want police approaching with sirens.
'I don't want him to kill me,' she wrote.
The whole time, Tamir was able to track Jaila's location and provided updates for the police there. As they approached, an officer in the parking lot where the kidnapper had stopped noticed the idle car, which matched the description he'd heard on the scanner.
When the officer started getting closet to the car, the kidnapper saw him and tried to speed off, ignoring drawn weapons and several cars along the way, which he crashed into.
Finally, the kidnapper crashed into a fence, and managed to escape over it by foot. Jaila, though, was safe, and ran toward the police.
'If I didn't get the location, who knows what would have happened,' her boyfriend said later. 'Her doing it on her own — she was able to outsmart the bad guy.'
While Jaila thinks better parking lot security could have prevented her kidnapping, Carrollton police nonetheless said in a statement that others could learn from her and keep their own location services turned on.
On an iPhone, this can be achieved by going to Settings, Privacy, and Location Services, and turning on the 'Share My Location' feature.
Locations are not shared unless an iPhone user to chooses to send them, which is done by clicking the Applications icon at the bottom of a text message, selecting the Maps or Google Maps apps, and agreeing to send location.
Though the kidnapper fled the scene, ten hours later police arrested a man by the name of Timothy Wilson.
He has since been charged with kidnapping, hijacking a motor vehicle, aggravated assault, rape, aggravated sodomy, false imprisonment, and aggravated assault against a police officer.
I truly hope that this will be a lesson in bravery and one on how to avoid this same circumstance. Parents, urge your children to keep their location ON and to share it with you frequently. Everyone else should follow suit to. I'd hate to have to read, or write, one of these stories about one of my beloved #BackseatDrivers. Be safe everybody!
