An employee at a truck stop in Baton Rouge gave the police the break they needed in finding and rescuing 16-year-old Ashley Lyon from her alleged abductor, 41-year-old Steven Myers. The teenage girl was finally recovered hundreds of miles away from her Florida home after a nearly 40 mile police chase during which her captor allegedly stabbed her in the chest and back ten times.
Miraculously, Ashley is currently recovering at a local hospital in serious but stable condition. In addition to her stab wounds she had to undergo surgery to remove a blood clot from her leg.
According to police reports, Myers, a convicted sex offender, had known Ashley in her neighborhood and had exchanged hundreds of text messages prior to her abduction.
The two were at a truck stop when a cashier thought she recognized the pair from media coverage of the abduction. Sent them to her coworker’s register while she went to the back to try and confirm who they were.
“She sent him to my register,” said the coworker, James Holbrook. “She went to back and she watched Nancy Grace to confirm this was the guy.” When she came back, Holbrook called 911.
When deputies showed up, Myers and Ashley took off, leading over a dozen police vehicles on a nearly 40 mile chase during which he allegedly purposefully collided with four other vehicles. Police were able to immobilize the vehicle by destroying the vehicle’s tires with stop sticks. When the pickup truck finally came to a stop, Myers got out holding a knife and asked police to shoot him. When they didn’t, he began to stab himself. Police used a Taser and a police dog to subdue him. Myers was treated for his wounds and released into police custody.
Myers has been charged with attempted first-degree murder and aggravated criminal damage to property in Lafayette and is charged with interfering with child custody, attempted sexual activity with minors, and traveling to meet a minor in Hillborough County.
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Source: wtsp, myfoxtampabay, katc, tampabay, abcactionnews
It’s good to hear these situations sometimes have a happy ending. Hats off to the truck stop employees.
Yes, kudos to the truck stop employee and glad the girl was rescued. That being said, a true happy ending would have resulted in this animal being put down.
Cheers to that Cashier…you may have just saved that Girls Life…and to the Police who put their Lives on the line every Day…nice to hear Happy Endings to some Stories…
What she was thinking when she was exchanging texts with a man older than her father???
Probably not thinking. Some girls are just desperate for attention, and they never think it will turn bad for them. I don’t say attention like it’s a bad thing, just needy.
So was the accused a truck driver? I hope not we already have bad image as it is with public . God bless that cashier, she saved a life!
The article says he was driving a pickup truck… not a big truck. I thing the only trucking connection is that they were spotted in a truck stop. Com’mon now–a truck driver would never do something like that!
Why are these people running the streets?….they need to be caged and nt allowed to prey upon society..
Not caged. Put down. Sex offenders can’t be rehabilitated and should be removed from society.
Okay, a sixteen-year-old who’s been kidnapped stands in a convenience store and says and does nothing. No running to the ladies’ room? He had her in his thrall. Was she brainwashed into obeying adults? So sad she was in this state.
Since she had been stabbed in the chest and back 10 times, she was probably was too terrified or too weak to run.
That didn’t happen until the police chase started. My bet is that he was looking to kill off a future witness to testify against him in court. Dead people can’t tell their own story, even if the story is still obvious, and the law tends to give less credence to the obvious story than the one told by a live witness.
Paula
Victims like her can’t be blamed for not letting anyone know she was kidnapped. many times they are told that if they try to escape they will be shot or that the family will be killed or a store clerk etc. the poor girl was probably scared for her life and just trying to survive. This shows that the media can be used to get this information out quickly.
Hats off the my favorite Baton Rouge truck stop munchkins! You guys deserve a week off with pay. And I have a position for Mr Myers, too. I’m missing a mud flap….
And now, Ashley: its a shame that we live in a world today where kids can’t trust any adult even if it means saving their life. Anybody got a suggestion as to how to help kids change their belief? The poor girl was in a truck stop in the middle of a zillion truckers and was petrified, scared to yell for help. Maybe every truck stop in America could put signs on their door saying something like “Hey Kids! Scared? SCREAM LOUD NOW.”
I sincerely doubt that she was particularly scared, until the police got involved. She wasn’t so young as to not know how to get away or get help, or even send a signal that she felt that she was in some kind of danger. I suspect that the situation didn’t get dangerous until the guy she was with realized that he was cornered. Cops should really have had enough sense to separate them before alerting and apprehending him.
It’s a relief that the perp wasn’t a trucker this time. Have fun in Angola, greaseball.
I have being driving trucks over the road for 36 years and haven`t rape or kidnap anybody, I still don`t understand how people do associate crime with a specified sort of people or jobs, you can be a policeman and a criminal, or a judge and be using drugs and molesting minors, it got nothing to do with profession, race, religion or country of born, if you are bad, you are bad independently of anything else.
This guy is a sexual offender and should be putting down for good, should it be release for prison in few years it will try to do the same again, maybe with fatal consequences next time.
Kudos to the truck stop workers who help this girl get free from this maniac, still don`t understand how she was driving with him w/o trying to escape but it doesn`t matter by now, she got away with it thanks God.
It might be a good idea to castrate him. Failing that, put him in general population and tell the other cons all about him. A quick death penalty and he won’t end up on Lock Up.