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Two girls who were kidnapped in Bountiful last week, bound with duct tape and held overnight in Santaquin are recovering while police seek clues as to who might have grabbed them off the street.
The girls, 16 and 17, wanted to have a sleepover Sept. 15 at the Bountiful home of the 16-year-old. The 17-year-old's mother dropped them off about 10 p.m., and they went for a walk about an hour later, said the mother, who spoke with The Tribune on Monday to seek help from the public in identifying the girls' abductors. The Tribune is not identifying her to prevent identifying her daughter, who may still be sought by those who kidnapped her, the mother said.
At about 11:45 p.m. Sept. 15, the 17-year-old sent a message via Snapchat to some friends, saying that she thought she was being followed, her mother said.
At 2 a.m., the girls later said, a red SUV pulled up next to them near Tolman Memorial Park, at 1300 E. 250 North. Two men held them at knifepoint and forced them into the SUV, binding their wrists and taping their mouths with duct tape, the victim's mother said.
Periodically, the two men and a woman in the truck pulled the tape off the girls' mouths and forced them to drink water, the mother said. A lab test is pending to determine whether they were drugged; both girls have patchy memories of their ordeal, the mother said.
While the girls were being held in the SUV, parked at an unknown Santaquin address, the 17-year-old's mother called their phones around noon on Tuesday, reaching only voicemail. Both girls are home schooled and follow a flexible schedule with frequent night shifts at restaurant jobs, the mother said. It wasn't until later in the day, when the 16-year-old's mother received calls that her daughter had not shown up for work, that they realized neither parent had seen the girls since the night before.
The girls' co-workers met with their parents and police and went over suspicious details: the Snapchat message from the night before, the 17-year-old's report to police in August that she had fled a man lurking in the garage of her family's Centerville home and her mother's sighting of a person watching their house from a car parked outside.
Meanwhile, the girls remained under the watch of a woman in the SUV, nearly 20 hours after they had been forced in the car. While the woman was distracted, the 16-year-old freed her wrists from the duct tape and helped the 17-year-old, the girls later recounted. They got out of the back of the SUV and ran "a significant distance" through Santaquin, trying to flag down a motorist, said Bountiful police Lt. Dave Edwards. A woman on Main Street let them use her cellphone to call police, Edwards said.
When their parents arrived at the Santaquin Police Department, the 16-year-old burst into tears and ran to her mother. The 17-year-old was "frozen," her mother said.
"There was no color in her face," the mother said. "She showed no emotion at all. It was like she was there, but she wasn't there."
The 17-year-old had suffered minor cuts from the knife she was threatened with, but she required no hospital care, her mother said. The two girls are recovering but are "still really traumatized," said the 16-year-old's mother. They are no longer walking to work or other activities, for fear of someone following them.
Police do not have any indication that the abduction was planned, as it occurred far from the suspicious activity at the 17-year-old's home. They are asking anyone who saw them or the vehicle in Bountiful or in Santaquin to call investigators at 801-298-6000.
The suspects are described as a 20- to 25-year-old white man who is slender and medium height with light brown hair and a tattoo on his left arm; a tall 30- to 35-year-old white man with a medium build and dark brown hair; and a 25- to 35-year-old heavyset white woman of medium height with long, blond hair. The make and model of the SUV are unknown.