ELIZABETH SHOAF

Man arrested in teen kidnap case 17/09/2006 - 14:21:01

Authorities in the US today arrested a man suspected of kidnapping a 14-year-old girl who sent a text message to her mother that led to her rescue from a booby-trapped bunker.

Investigators arrested Vinson Filyaw, 37, in Richland County about 24 hours after rescuing Elizabeth Shoaf, Steve McCaskill, the sheriff in neighbouring Kershaw County.

Filyaw will be charged with kidnapping, possession of an incendiary device and impersonating an officer, he said.

McCaskill said more charges are likely to follow after investigators interview the girl. Police expected to talk to her tomorrow about the abduction on September 6 and the ordeal that followed, he said.

"The big relief was when we found Elizabeth Shoaf alive and well,” McCaskill said. “But it is a great relief when you get a criminal of this type out of society and behind bars."


Sheriff’s deputies found Shoaf about a mile from her home in a 15-ft deep hole covered with plywood. The bunker had a hand-dug toilet, a camp stove and shelves made with cut branches and canvas.

McCaskill said the girl appeared to be unharmed but was taken to the hospital for checks.

"We’re just glad that she’s alive and she’s safe and that she will be home with us," her aunt, Geraldine Williams, told WLTX-TV in Columbia. "She’s a good girl. We never believed that she ran away."

Deputies had been searching for Filyaw, an unemployed construction worker, for months on an unrelated charge of criminal sexual conduct against a 12-year-old girl, McCaskill said.

Officers tried to arrest him at his home earlier this week but he had an elaborate escape plan involving a tunnel dug from his bedroom to a shed, the sheriff said.

"When deputies came to serve the warrant, he was able to escape, going under the mattress, going under the trailer and hiding and eluding the arrest," McCaskill said.

Police said Elizabeth, from Lugoff, South Carolina, was being reunited with her mother Madeline Shoaf.

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