What methods have you taught your kids to protect themselves in dangerous situations? Do they know not to get in vehicles with strangers, and to ask for a code word if someone claims to be sent by you?
Nobody can anticipate every possible situation, and sometimes it’s a child’s creativity, self-preservation instincts, or perseverance that brings them out of dangerous circumstances unharmed (or less harmed). Kids’ instincts might lead them to go limp, scream, or bite.
Then, there are the amazing cases where children find their own way out.
Editor’s note: To protect children’s privacy and anonymity, many cases are represented by stock photos.
Roaring Like A Lion
This brave child’s name is being kept quiet because she’s only six years old. However, the courage (and sound) of a lion is the reason that her attacker will face trial.
According to WLWT, the six-year-old child was with her mother in a Five Below store in Ohio, and needed a change of clothes. Her mother sent her into a family restroom and said not to unlock the door until she heard a specific knock pattern. Unfortunately, a man with ill intentions overheard the conversation and reportedly mimicked the knock to get access.
However, the child knew a tactic that Scouting America teaches: the Lion’s Roar. The idea is to make the child loud and noticeable, and this little girl put it to good use. Her attacker, who presumably did not want to be noticed, fled the room and was captured about a mile away.
A Song Of Praise & Worship
Many times, one of my children has been singing or chanting something in a loop, and I’ve wondered just how long they could keep it up without stopping, if nobody interrupted. In 2014, nine-year-old Willie Myrick made it for about 3 hours, according to reports.
The kidnapper was never identified, but News4Jax reported at the time that Myrick escaped by singing praise music!
The boy was reportedly grabbed from his driveway in Atlanta and told to be quiet. Instead, Willie began singing his favorite gospel song, Every Praise. He refused to stop singing for hours, and the frustrated kidnapper gave up and let him out, ordering him to tell no one.
Make Noise & Resist!
It doesn’t have to be roaring or singing. Any loud noise and resistance that makes a kidnapper’s intent harder to carry out can be lifesaving.
In 2022, Ken’Adi Nash, age 6 at the time, was taking out the trash, clearly visible on her family’s home security camera, in broad daylight in front of her home. In the video, a man can be seen trying to grab her.
Ken’Adi’s screams can be heard on the camera, and she’s seen pulling away. According to ABC, the would-be abductor fled, and the child hurried back into her home to report to her parents. Thanks to her loud scream and resistance, he’s been sentenced to 11 to 15 years.
Paying Attention & Feigning Compliance
Resisting a captor can be an excellent way to escape. Feigning compliance is a gamble, but in some cases, it’s been the means a kidnapped victim has employed to lower the abductor’s guard.
According to People, this is how 15-year-old Kara Robinson Chamberlain escaped a captor in 2002. The man trapped her in his apartment and carried out repeated assaults, but she kept repeating three important steps in her head: “Gather information, wait for him to be complacent, escape.”
She memorized everything she could about the man, his apartment, and his life, and kept herself calm over the course of the 18 hours she was held captive. She offered to clean his apartment. Eventually, he fell asleep, and she fled.
The man took his own life as police approached him, but was afterward linked to the deaths of at least three children in the 1990s, so Kara likely saved not only her own life, but those of any potential future victims.
Taking A Big Risk
We teach our kids to be safe in the car. They should always sit in their seats, keep their safety restraints fastened, and never open the door while the vehicle is moving.
In 2017, Antwaun Jones, age 12 at the time, decided that the moment he was being abducted was the exception to those rules. According to CBS, after a man forced him into a vehicle at gunpoint, he watched for the right moment and leaped from the car.
Antwaun says he hit his head several times as he tucked and rolled, and could feel himself getting cut up. He suffered a broken collarbone and a chipped elbow, but a witness to his escape called 911, and thanks to an eyewitness and security footage, the abductor was captured within hours.
Antwaun isn’t the only kid to escape an abductor this way. As seen in the video above, another 12-year-old boy escaped a similar situation in 2020.
Using One’s Head — And One’s Teeth
In 2002, Erica Pratt was kidnapped by two men known to the family. There were reportedly rumors that the family had come into a large sum of money, and the Lawrence Journal-World reported that the parents had been contacted with a $150,000 ransom demand.
However, neighbors said that the rumor was bunk and that the money didn’t exist. Erica, who was only 7 years old, probably knew none of this. She only knew she’d been restrained with duct tape in the basement of an abandoned building.
She also knew she wasn’t staying there. She chewed through the duct tape and headed upstairs, but couldn’t get out. So she broke a window and shouted to some kids playing nearby. They helped her through the window, while one kid on a bike went for law enforcement.
Teeth Are A Valuable Tool
Teeth aren’t only for tearing duct tape. A few years ago, a man was arrested after attempting to grab a 6-year-old girl named Ah’Lyric.
Security footage caught the man sneaking around the home, but it’s the child who thwarted the abduction attempt. She fought back, using a move that she says her mother taught her: she bit the man’s arm. She also remembered his appearance and could describe him.
Her mother says that she’s told Ah’Lyric to avoid strangers, and that if anyone bothers her, to fight and scream.
Thanks to Ah’Lyric’s courage and her mother’s teaching, the abduction attempt failed, and the man was handed a 30-year sentence just last week, according to NBC Miami.
When All Else Fails, Leave Evidence
When a man in a clown mask broke into the home of an 8-year-old Colorado girl, she, too, fought back. Though she was hit on the head and knocked unconscious during the struggle, the alleged would-be kidnapper left, and left behind his gloves and mask.
Police say that the amount of digital, forensic, and physical evidence he left behind led to the man’s identification, according to WSAZ3. He was reportedly in the home previously to install an appliance.
There’s no official release regarding whether that evidence is directly attributable to the child’s fight, but skin left under a victim’s fingernails from defensive scratching is one way of gathering DNA for identifying an assailant. It also seems as though her fight might have contributed to him fleeing, and thus leaving behind his mask and glvoes, which are also great sources of DNA evidence.
What is clear is that this little girl’s instinct to fight likely saved her.
Use What Gym Class Taught You
In Arizona in 2024, an 11-year-old girl’s instincts and speedy escape thwarted a man who already had violent charges (attempted murder and aggravated assault) from a decade earlier, according to AZ Family.
As she left her apartment to walk to school, the unnamed girl saw a man sitting at the bottom of the stairs and noticed he gave her a look that made her uncomfortable. She heeded that feeling and began to run.
As she continued toward school, she saw the same man approaching again, this time in a vehicle. He got out and began running towards her, but she was faster. She ran towards some friends, yelling, and after a short pursuit, the man returned to his vehicle.
Upon hearing her story, police verified it with security footage and arrested the man.
Being Difficult To Grab
If you’ve ever tried to carry a tantrumming toddler out of a grocery store, you know that kids can be really difficult to carry against their will. They turn into wobbly, slippery Jello sacks, they stiffen into immovable objects, they go “dead weight’ and seem to actually get heavier.
While we’d never want to generalize about all attackers or kidnappers, it’s typical for them to be seeking an easy grab. Crime is a lot harder when you attract too much attention, and getting caught becomes more likely when the process is long or slow, so a kid that’s hard to grab may be a less-appealing target.
That’s why just being hard to pick up or grab can be a tactic, and in 2016, a 13-year-old girl attributed that feat not just to her own actions, but to her backpack, according to ABC11.
She says that her instinct was to run away and scream, and that she believes her heavy backpack kept him from getting a good grip.
“He grabbed me around my waist and locked his fingers,” she said. “I was pulling, like pulling his wrists, away from each other. And that’s when I guess he gave up, and I kept running. And he went back to his car.”
Delay, Distract, Defy
When someone points a firearm at you and gives an order, any decision you make is a gamble. In 2024 in Colorado, one girl’s refusal to comply worked out in her favor.
The unnamed child was on her way to school when a man pointed a gun at her and told her to get in his car. According to the District Attorney, she stalled, saying that she had money in her backpack. The delay worked. A bystander was approaching, and rather than drag out the process, the man grabbed the backpack and drove off.
The man was identified and caught, and charged in a string of other crimes from that day, including robbing a man at gunpoint, demanding a woman’s car keys and driving off, and forcing another woman to drive him a distance at gunpoint.
Thankfully, one child had the instinct to refuse to comply!
Kicking And Screaming
Putting up a fight is one of the most common ways kids escape their would-be abductors. Again, many abductors just aren’t interested in a prolonged fight that could attract attention, and there are plenty of cases in which someone seems to have just decided a kidnapping wasn’t going easily enough and gave up.
Sometimes there’s some serious fighting involved. That’s what happened in December 2025, when an 11-year-old girl in Washington was the target of an attempted kidnapping, according to People.
She said that she felt uncomfortable when she saw a man walking toward her wearing a ski mask. Then he grabbed her elbow. She screamed, and he told her to shut up and grabbed her cell phone so she couldn’t call for help.
She tried to wrestle free, and was successful after delivering a kick to the groin.
Stick It To The Man
An 11-year-old girl, whose name has not been released, was walking to school in Colorado in 2024 when a man on a bicycle approached.
He grabbed her by the shoulder, but she wasn’t going with him. She reached for the first object to hand, which happened to be a tree branch, and hit the man with it, according to KKTV.
Her instinct to fight was the right one. The man gave up and rode away, and she ran to her school to report the incident.
She’s just one of many children who share the same story: they fought back, survived, and remained free. Unfortunately, in her case, the would-be kidnapper has not been identified.
Never, Ever Give Up Hope
Abby Hernandez spent 9 months as the prisoner of the man who abducted her when she was 14 years old.
According to Blurred Bylines, she said that the whole time he kept her captive, using restraints, a shock collar, and other means to keep her under control, she prayed, but “never said amen,” because she didn’t want to end the prayer and break contact with God.
In the same way, she never let up the steady pressure on her captor. Instead, she kept working to earn his trust, promising that she would never reveal his identity if he let her leave, and learning his name by finding it in one of his books, which he eventually allowed her to read.
She even coaxed her captor into trusting her enough that he allowed her to write a letter to her mother at one point.
Hernandez says that the whole time she was kept in a shed, she never lost her will to escape.
