SILVERDALE, Wash. — A U.S. Marine has been arrested, accused of trying to violently kidnap a 12-year-old girl in Kitsap County.
KIRO 7 spoke with the victim’s father about how he helped deputies make the arrest.
Investigators said the girl was on her way home from middle school when a man grabbed her and told her she was coming with him. She reportedly punched the man, ran away and took a picture of him.
“She knows how to defend herself,” Dustin Praxedes, the girl’s father, said.
Praxedes posted the picture on Facebook, asking for help identifying him. Someone eventually sent him the man’s address.
“I’m sick to my stomach,” he said. “I didn’t sleep much until I found him.”
Two days after the attempted kidnapping, Praxedes was at the suspect’s apartment.
He told KIRO 7 he called 911, then watched as deputies took him into custody.
“I’d like a lawyer,” Timothy Caldwell, the suspect, told deputies in footage Praxedes recorded of the arrest.
According to court records, deputies asked Caldwell if he knew why they were at his home, to which he stated it was because of Praxedes’ Facebook post.
He reportedly had a loaded shotgun near the door and refused to answer questions without a lawye...