A Texas man will spend decades behind bars for kidnapping and repeatedly raping a 13-year-old girl who was only saved when good Samaritans saw her holding a “Help Me” sign in the back of a car.
Steven Robert Sablan, 63, confessed to abducting the girl at gunpoint in July 2023 in San Antonio before driving her nearly 1,400 miles to California, said the US Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.
He was sentenced Friday to 35 years in prison.
Sablan, who is originally from Cleburne, Texas, kidnapped the girl July 6, 2023, and then drove her more than 1,000 miles to Long Beach, Calif.
During the kidnapping, he sexually assaulted the child and used a firearm to “threaten and control” her, authorities said.
At the time, he had “no legal custody or familial relationship to the victim,” the US attorney’s office said.
The teen was rescued three days later — when good Samaritans called 911 after seeing the teen holding a sign that read “Help Me.”
“Good Samaritans were in a parking lot when they saw the victim in a parked vehicle holding up a piece of paper with ‘help me’ written on it,” according to a July 2023 press release from the Long Beach Police Department. “They acknowledged the note and immediately called 9-1-1.”
According to authorities, the girl also mouthed “help me” to passers-by while Sablan was inside a laundromat.
At one point during the kidnapping, Sablan asked the victim how old she was, and she replied 13, officials said.
He later promised her she could take a cruise to visit a friend in Australia but said that she “had to do something for him first,” according to a July 2023 statement from the US Attorney’s Office.
“[Sablan] violently abducted a child and repeatedly sexually assaulted her while driving her thousands of miles from her home,” prosecutors said in a sentencing memorandum. “And while [Sablan] spent days abusing her for his own pleasure, her parents agonized over their missing child, fearing the worst. The worst was not far from reality.”
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