Police said Sunday that they found a 14-year-old North Carolina girl alive and spotted her 38-year-old kidnapper in Arkansas. The suspect led police on a chase before allegedly killing himself, police said in a statement on Facebook.
Savannah Grace Childress was reported missing from Davidson County on Feb. 11, according to the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office.
Investigators quickly discovered that Childress was using her school issued computer to talk to 38-year-old William Ice of Mercer County, Pennsylvania. Investigators also found that Ice was talking to other juvenile females in Alamance County, according to police.
Investigators determined that Ice “removed” Childress from her home Feb. 11, according to police. (RELATED: Man Who Impersonated Officer And Kidnapped Two Girls Arrested, Police Say)
“I am just heartbroken, I miss my baby,” Nicole Childress, Savannah’s mother, said during a Wednesday interview with WFMY.
Various law enforcement agencies were able to locate Ice and Childress in Lonoke County, Arkansas, in a McDonald’s parking lot at around 8 p.m. Saturday, according to a press release from the Arkansas State Police.
Two officers recognized a Dodge sport utility vehicle that Ice was suspected to be driving parked in a McDonald’s lot. The officers approached the vehicle and saw two people inside and ordered Ice out of the vehicle. Ice initially complied but as he exited the vehicle he began shooting at officers, critically wounding one officer, according to police. The officer is reported to be in stable condition, according to Arkansas State Police.
The second, uninjured officer fired back as Ice got back into the vehicle and fled.
An Arkansas state trooper then spotted Ice leaving the parking lot and followed Ice down the highway until Ice’s vehicle “became disabled in a snowbank,” according to the Arkansas State Police.
Childress ran out of the vehicle and was “secured” by a state trooper. Ice was found inside the vehicle “critically injured from what preliminarily appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound,” according to the press release.
Ice later died at a Little Rock hospital early Sunday and was wanted in Pennsylvania for other child predator cases, according to police.
The investigation remains ongoing.
Roughly 3% of kidnapped children are abducted by non-family members, according to the Polly Klaas Foundation. The kidnapper is “often someone the child knows,” according to the foundation.
