Sheriff: Dad Tracks Phone, Saves Daughter From Abductor

Police say a Texas father used his cellphone's parental-tracking feature to rescue his teenage daughter from an alleged abductor on Christmas Day, reports CBS News. Deputies in Montgomery County, north of Houston, say it began when the girl, 15, failed to return from an afternoon dog walk. Her father then used parental controls to locate her phone roughly two miles away in a remote, partly wooded area, per People.

When the father went to the spot, deputies say he found his daughter and her dog inside a maroon pickup along with a partially unclothed man. The father got the teen out of the vehicle and brought her home before contacting law enforcement. Investigators allege the man had forced the girl into the truck by threatening her with a knife. Witness accounts helped deputies identify the vehicle and its driver as 23-year-old Giovanni Rosales Espinoza, who was later arrested without incident. Espinoza is charged with aggravated kidnapping and indecency with a child and is being held without bond in the Montgomery County Jail.

"Christmas is a day meant for joy, but this man chose to shatter that joy by targeting a child," Sheriff Wesley Doolittle said in a statement. The family tells KHOU that the girl did not know the suspect. The case remains under investigation.