Utah stepdad foils kidnapping of his 5-year-old daughter and becomes a hero. Troy Mitchell Morley has been arrested for attempting to abduct a child. The stepfather, Aaron Edson, 37, is being praised by the community.
Utah stepdad foils kidnapping of his little girl by mentally ill man. Friday morning at around 4:30 a.m., a stepdad from Salt Lake City, Utah was awoken by the sound of the front door closing.
The stepdad whose name is Aaron Edson ran to the front of the home where he saw a stranger carrying his 5-year-old daughter.
According to Sandy Police Department’s Sgt. Dean Carriger, the family screamed at the kidnapper saying:
“What are you doing? That’s my daughter, you’re not taking her!”
The kidnapper, who was later identified as Troy Mitchell Morley immediately dropped the child, and ran away. Officers from the Sandy Police Department quickly set up a perimeter in the neighborhood and began looking for Troy Mitchell Morley.
The criminal entered a second house through a dog door that leads into a basement where the home owner found him and screamed. Tina Olsen, who also heard the child screaming for help, discovered Morley in her home said:
“I went downstairs, and he was crouched up kind of by the back door with no shirt on. And he just said like, ‘Am I bad? Am I in trouble?’ I just started screaming and ran up the stairs and told my husband, ‘There’s a man in the house.'”
Morley tried to flee, but was subdued by police K-9s that bit him in the right shoulder and upper arm. Officers arrested Morley who was taken to a local hospital to be treated for dog bite injuries.
Miles Holman, an attorney for the family said it was miracle and they are doing well. Holman shared:
“Fifteen seconds later, the guy would have been 50 yards outside the house, he would have been gone.I’ve been calling it a miracle. Nobody around Sandy expects anything like this – it is a quiet, middle-class neighborhood, not a dangerous place to live.”
The story has many thinking about the 2002 abduction of 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart in Salt Lake City by Mormon preacher Brian David Mitchell.
According to police, about an hour before the attempted kidnapping, Morley walked into a hotel and told a clerk to call 911 because he was in danger.
When the police arrived to the hotel, Morley had vanished.
