Woman Thwarts Abduction of Young Girl

Grandmother says she yelled at the man to stop him.

ByABC News
December 20, 2014, 1:12 PM

— -- An employee at the Maine State Museum said her instincts kicked in when she saw an alleged attempted abduction.

Sharon Wise, 65, was at the museum reception desk on Tuesday when she saw a man run over to a 2-year-old girl and start to pull her by her wrist, according to ABC News affiliate WMTW-TV in Augusta, Maine.

Wise said it all happened while the little girl's grandmother was hanging up their coats.

"He grabbed a hold of the little girl and grabbed a hold of her wrist and he starts pulling her," Wise told WMTW-TV. "At that point, instinctively I bent over and hovered over the child. I kept saying in a very low voice, leave her alone."

Wise said the man did not leave the girl alone but instead kept pulling her. That's when Wise, acting on instinct, managed to get between the man and the young girl, according to WMTW-TV.

"I looked him right in the eye and I was really close to him and I said, 'Let go of her now,' and he waited for a minute, looked me right in the eye and he dropped her hand and left," she said.

Minutes after he left, the man identified as James Cavallaro was arrested by police in the museum parking lot.

"When he grabbed her, she [Wise] went right over and told him to let go and wouldn't take no for an answer," Chief Russell Gauvin of the Bureau of Capitol Police told The Associated Press.

Cavallaro was charged with assault and held at the Kennebec County Jail.

Wise said she was happy she could be there to help, but that any other museum employee would have done the same.

"He was definitely not leaving the museum with a 2-year-old. It wasn't going to happen," she told WMTW-TV.