Michigan gas station clerk saves teen from alleged kidnapper after she mouths 'help' [View all]

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/19/michigan-gas-station-clerk-saves-teen

Michigan gas station clerk saves teen from alleged kidnapper after she mouths ‘help’

In Hamtramck, Abdulrahman Abohatem placed himself between 16-year-old girl and man before police arrest

Ramon Antonio Vargas
Sun 19 Apr 2026 05.00 EDT

A gasoline station clerk who came to a suburban Detroit girl’s defense when she entered his store and mouthed the word “help” ultimately had a hand in saving the teenager after a stranger had kidnapped her at gunpoint on her way to school, according to authorities.

“I believe this could have [gone] a lot worse than it did,” said police chief Hussein Farhat of Hamtramck, Michigan, at a news conference addressing a rescue partially attributed to convenience store employee Abdulrahman Abohatem. “We have every belief that this could have ended really badly.”

As first reported by the Michigan news outlet WXYZ, the 16-year-old girl at the center of the case was waiting for a school bus in Hamtramck to take her to classes at Frontier International Academy on the morning of 13 April when a gun-wielding man whom she did not know kidnapped her.

The man, who had evidently targeted the girl at random, eventually brought her to a Sunoco gasoline station in nearby Detroit where Abohatem was working as a clerk. Abohatem later told WXYZ that he became suspicious of the situation when the man asked the girl to pay for cigarettes.

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