Dad foils kidnapping, saves 5-year-old daughter

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http://www.policeone.com/bizarre/articles/7793683-Dad-foils-kidnapping-saves-5-year-old-daughter/

A couple from Utah was awakened to an unsettling noise at 4:30 on Friday morning: the sound of their front door opening and their 5-year-old daughter talking.

When the father rushed outside in his pajamas, he saw the terrifying sight of his 5-year-old stepdaughter in the arms of a stranger who was carrying her away across the front lawn.

The man had snatched the girl out of her bed in the basement moments earlier after coming in the house through an unlocked door, police said.

The father confronted the man, demanding that he give the girl back. Without a fight, the intruder handed her over, and then fled the scene.

"There was a man in my home and he took my 5-year-old daughter," said the mother, crying, in a 911 call moments later.

A man later identified as Troy Morley, 48, of Roy, Utah, was caught two blocks away after breaking into another house in a middle-class neighborhood in the Salt Lake City suburb of Sandy.

Morley was arrested and booked on charges of child kidnapping, burglary, trespassing and resisting arrest.

The 5-year-old girl wasn't hurt in the frightening experience, but the incident has evoked haunting echoes of when 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart was snatched out of her Salt Lake City bedroom in 2002. She was held captive for nine months before being found.

The abduction attempt was not targeted, but a random incident, said Sandy Police Sgt. Dean Carriger. The family said they don't know Morley.