 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
Back
|
Mom shaken after daughter's ordeal
By WES ALLISON
© St. Petersburg Times,
Now she thanks God that the same fearlessness that led her daughter, Dominique, into trouble Wednesday night also got her out. Dominique, 13, of Clearwater, was recovering at Bayfront Medical Center on Thursday after jumping from a moving minivan to escape a man who lured her into the passenger seat, then beat her. "What if the (last) punch knocked her out? Think we'd have her right now?" Kindinis said Thursday outside her daughter's hospital room. "Hell, no, we would not have her right now. "This is that second chance that most parents don't get." The man's blows broke Dominique's nose and badly bruised an ear. She broke her left leg jumping out the window of the van, which was going about 40 mph.
Pinellas sheriff's spokesman Cal Dennie said Dominique picked Acosta's picture out of a lineup of photographs. Acosta denied involvement in the crime, Dennie said. The girl had said she did not know her assailant. Dennie said parents and children should be aware of potential dangers. "We teach them early on about stranger danger, not to get in a car and not to accept candy from strangers," he said. Dominique, an eighth-grader at Oak Grove Middle School, was in good condition Thursday but remained badly shaken, her mom said. Kindinis described her as eager to find the good in people and said her trusting soul has been deeply scarred. "She has no fear, and she doesn't think anything is going to happen to her," her mom said. "She wasn't afraid; she thought he was going to be a friend. Dominique thinks everyone is going to be a friend." Kindinis said her daughter's ordeal began about 7:15 p.m. Wednesday. She and a friend had just returned from karate practice, and the girls left Kindinis' townhome to walk the neighborhood. They were supposed to be home by 8. When Dominique's friend returned without her, she told Kindinis they were playing hide and seek, and she couldn't find her. Twenty minutes later, the girl returned with the truth: Dominique had gotten into a van with a stranger. Kindinis, the bar manager at MoJo's in Belleair Bluffs, said she "freaked," then jumped into her car and took a quick turn around the neighborhood to look for her. She returned home and called 911, and had just hung up when another girl from the neighborhood knocked on her door and said her mom had found Dominique in a ditch. According to Kindinis, Dominique and her friend say the man pulled alongside them at Haines Bayshore Road and Elaine Drive and struck up a conversation, telling the girls he was 16 and was visiting his brother. He asked whether they wanted to take a ride, and Dominique said yes. After she got in, he said he was really 19. Dominique told her mom they drove to a nearby gas station, then parked outside a motel. The man began kissing her, and she told him she had to go home. He started driving her back but, a few blocks from her house, he hit her on the side of her head. He hit her again in the face, breaking her nose, then hit her again and again. As he struck, he was yelling, "Why did you do this to me?" Kindinis said. The van was swerving as he punched her, and Dominique managed to pull away from the man and dive through the van's open window, landing in the drainage ditch on Wolford Drive. A nurse driving behind the van stopped to help. The nurse's daughters recognized Dominique from the neighborhood, and one ran to find Kindinis while two passers-by dialed 911. "All I can remember is seeing her with blood all through her hair and on her face, and her leg broken, and her nose," Kindinis said, choking back tears. No similar abductions or attempts have been reported recently, Dennie said. Police in Clearwater and Largo also say they haven't had any abduction attempts recently that match this one. -- Times staff writers Chris Tisch and Mike Brassfield contributed to this report.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
Headlines From the Times local news desks |
