San Antonio teen kidnapping: Steven Sablan Texas man abducts 13 year old teen girl, sexually assaults her during 3 day trip until she is rescued after holding Help Me sign from inside vehicle outside laundromat.
A 13-year-old girl who was kidnapped at gunpoint in Texas was rescued in California earlier this month after a passersby spotted her holding up a ‘Help Me!’ sign from the inside of a parked car.
The victim, who had been ongoing sexually assaulted during the drive from Texas to California was saved from the vehicle at the Easy Wash Laundromat in Long Beach on July 9.
Steven Robert Sablan, 61, of Cleburne, Texas, was arrested and charged with kidnapping and transportation of a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity according to a release from the Long Beach Police Department.
Texas man (repeat offender) pleads guilty to kidnapping 13 year old girl at gunpoint
Regular customers at laundromat acknowledged teen girl
The un-named teen girl’s rescue came three days after she was allegedly abducted at gunpoint from San Antonio before driving 19 hours across the US to Long Beach.
Investigators say Sablan stopped at a laundromat to wash their clothes and asked an employee where he could grab some food.
The employee told KABC that she sensed something was wrong, so she stalled him.
Moments later, the girl held up a ‘Help me’ sign she made with a crumpled up piece of paper and a passerby called 911. Responding officers said they saw Sablan standing outside the vehicle with the victim, who mouthed the word ‘Help.’
‘Through their investigation, officers learned the Good Samaritans were in a parking lot when they saw the victim in a parked vehicle holding up a piece of paper with ‘help me’ written on it’, cops said.
‘The customers – who are regulars at Easy Wash Laundromat in Long Beach – acknowledged the note and immediately called 9-1-1.’
‘Help me!’
‘I feel happy. I feel like God told me to stop him. That’s how she got rescued,’ the employee, Touch Vong, said.
Sablan following his arrest was being held at the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown LA.
The girl came to be abducted while walking along a street in San Antonio on July 6 when Sablan allegedly drove up, raised a black handgun and told her, ‘If you don’t get in the car with me, I am going to hurt you,’ according to an affidavit.
According to the account, the girl had left home without telling her parents because she was trying to visit a school friend who had moved to Australia a year earlier, NBC Los Angeles reported.
At some point after getting in Sablan’s car, the girl told her captor about her friend and Sablan said he could take her to a cruise ship to go to Australia, but that she would have to do something for him, the affidavit said.
‘Fetish Fantasy Series Designer Cuffs,’
The suspect stopped the car and sexually assaulted the girl, who told him to stop but was scared that she would be hurt if she did not comply, according to the affidavit.
Sablan sexually assaulted the girl several more times on the drive from San Antonio through New Mexico and Arizona and into California, the affidavit stated.
Meanwhile, the girl’s mother reported her missing to San Antonio authorities on July 7.
In Long Beach, the suspect parked at the laundromat and told the girl to change her clothes, then took her clothes and his inside, creating the opportunity for the girl to write ‘help me’ on a piece of note paper, according to the document.
When Long Beach police officers arrived, Sablan was standing outside the car, with cops observing the girl mouth the word ‘help’.
During the arrest, officers found a pair of silver handcuffs in Sablan´s back pocket and that he was wanted for burglary in Fort Worth.
A search of the vehicle turned up the a black plastic BB gun, the ‘help me’ sign, a switchblade knife and black handcuffs in packaging labeled ‘Fetish Fantasy Series Designer Cuffs,’ the document said.
The affidavit said Sablan was convicted of robbery with a deadly weapon in 1979, robbery with a deadly weapon and burglary in 1985 and possession of a controlled substance in 2016.
The girl who was listed as a runaway was placed in the custody of the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services.
