The mother of a little girl abducted from her South Carolina home on Tuesday was brutally beaten in the face and tied up at knife point, according to new information obtained via an arrest affidavit.
As CrimeOnline previously reported, a 4-year-old girl was abducted from her Johns Island home off of Sweetleaf Lane on Tuesday afternoon after a man beat her mother so severely that numerous bones were broken in her face. Authorities in Alabama found the little girl on Wednesday, in a car with suspect, Thomas Lawton Evans.
Al.com reports that an arrest affidavit indicates that the attacker approached Brittany Todd from behind once she arrived home after dropping off her two oldest children at school.
“The attacker pushed her to the ground. The attacker then physically assaulted (the woman) causing facial fractures and brain bleeding, among other significant injuries,” FBI Special Agent Matt Rhue wrote in an affidavit filed at Charleston’s U.S. District Court.
When school officials contacted authorities and said that the mother never showed up to pick her children up for school in the afternoon, deputies went to the residence, where they found the woman badly beaten, who at the time could only give them limited information due to her physical state. She told police that she instructed her daughter to run and hide when the suspect started attacking her, but the attacker apparently took the girl and fled.
Riverside, Alabama, Police Chief Rick Oliver found the pair in the car, parked deep into the woods, around 20 miles east of Birmingham, after members of a railroad crew noticed the care and called the police.
“He was way out away from where he needed to be,” Oliver said. “There was no reason for him to be that far off in the wooded area.”
As Oliver walked up to the vehicle, the sleeping suspect woke up and appeared nervous. When asked to get out of the car with the girl, Evans complied. Oliver informed him that he needed to come to the station with him. Evans reportedly asked Oliver to hold the child, then immediately bolted back to his car and fled, leading police on a high-speed chase until he crashed at a dead end in Dekalb, Mississippi.
The suspect remains in custody at the detention center in Lauderdale County, Mississippi. He’s charged with felony fleeing and kidnapping.
The girl has been returned safely to her family, and her mother, who underwent emergency surgery, is expected to survive.
Check back with CrimeOnline as additional details become available.
[Feature Photo: Thomas Evans/Police Handout]
