community

‘Help, Don't Take Me': 15-Year-Old Girl Recounts Harrowing Abduction Attempt

Iyanna Franklin, 15, cannot understand why someone would try to snatch her off the street as she headed to school Wednesday morning.

“I’m thinking he’s about to take me somewhere," she said. "I don’t know where to go."

It all started at about 8 a.m. when Iyanna got off the bus near 87th Street and Ashland Avenue.

While walking toward her school, Hansberry College Prep, a man in a car called out to her, she said.

She ignored him.

Then the unthinkable happened.

“It came out of nowhere," she remembered. "The next thing you know I feel a pull on me and he put me in his car and I am yelling 'help, help, don’t take me."

Iyanna said she was able jumped out of the car and ran to her school where she says administrators called 911.

Her mother and a close family friend had been the first the get the news.

“I’m very upset," Debbie McPherson, Iyanna's mother, told NBC 5.

Police say there have been other reports of attempted abductions in the area.

Community activist Jedidiah Brown says he has received several calls about other attempted abductions and wants police to take a closer look at them.

"Is there a serial abductor in the city and what are the plans to address this and make the community more aware," he asked.

Police are investigating.

Contact Us