Chilling New Details Emerge In Kidnapping Of Center City Jewelry Store Employee
By Molly Daly
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- A woman who was kidnapped after leaving work at a Center City jewelry store was brutalized during her ordeal, police said Sunday.
Police say the 53-year-old victim was punched, kicked, choked and tasered seven times by her abductors.
Authorities say the horrifying ordeal began around 4 p.m. Saturday when the woman left her job at a store on Jewelers' Row along the 100 block of South 8th Street, and walked to the parking lot across the street. That's where police say three men grabbed her and forced her into a van.
Investigators say her wrists and ankles were bound with zip-ties, and a hood was placed over her head. The kidnappers demanded the keys to the store and the code to the safe, which she didn't know.
The victim says she was dumped in Mount Lawn Cemetery, but the kidnappers soon returned, dragging her back into the van. The woman tells police she gave them her bank card's pin number, and they stopped several times to withdraw cash, before she was dropped off at the same spot near 84th Street and Lindberg Boulevard.
The victim was found by a passing motorist, who called police. She is hospitalized at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center in stable condition.
Police are looking for an older burgundy-colored Ford Econoline van, with white graffiti on the side and back.
