Little Erica Pratt isn't afraid of Duct Tape !!!
Not to be forgotten this week is the story of little Erica Pratt, a recent child abductee.
There's a humorous tagline traversing the Internet today that says...
If it doesn't move, and should, use WD40.
If it moves, and shouldn't, use Duct Tape.
Courageous little Erica Pratt doesn't seem to have agreed...
Here's the Good News about Erica....
Posted on Thu, Jul. 25, 2002
Two arrested in kidnapping of Philadelphia girl
By Thomas J. Gibbons Jr., Nora Achrati and Mark Fazlollah
Knight Ridder
PHILADELPHIA - With Erica Pratt's two suspected kidnappers collared just over a mile from the abduction scene, police were focusing today on two other young men possibly involved in the crime.
One, authorities said, is an exceedingly violent 17-year-old from the Mantua section of Philadelphia who was arrested in February on charges of attempted murder.
The other, they said, is a 19-year-old, also from Mantua, who was arrested twice in 1999 in gun assaults but was acquitted in each case.
Three days after 7-year-old Erica was grabbed, James Burns, 29, and Edward Johnson, 23, were arrested early yesterday in Southwest Philadelphia and were being held on kidnapping, robbery and related charges.
Acting on a tip, two plainclothes detectives saw them at 6:30 a.m. EDT parked in a blue Ford Explorer. The detectives called for backup.
Burns and Johnson bolted from the vehicle, taking off in different directions, police said. As Burns darted off, he lost his sneakers and his baggy shorts before police ran him down, less than two blocks from the Explorer.
Johnson scaled a fence and pulled himself onto the roof of a one-story garage. An officer followed him onto the roof and found Johnson lying there, apparently trying to duck out of view. ``It´s over,´´ the officer declared and cuffed him.
Johnson pulled a groin muscle in his flight. Burns scraped and cut his feet. Both were treated at Mercy Hospital of Philadelphia and released to police; officers carried Burns to the lockup at Southwest Detective headquarters.
Investigators say that 70-pound Erica has identified Johnson as the man who grabbed her Monday from the sidewalk near her home. She said he immediately wrapped her in duct tape, covering her eyes, as she was driven off, police said.
Investigators have matched Johnson's fingerprints with prints left on the duct tape used to bind the girl, police said.
And police have determined that a key in Johnson's possession fits a door lock at the abandoned house in the Logan, Pa., neighborhood in which she was kept, authorities said.
At a news conference Wednesday, Chief Inspector Robert Davis stressed that ``the investigation is continuing.´´
Lt. Michael Chitwood, a lead investigator in the case, said police believe that others were involved in the kidnapping and that more arrests would likely be made this week.
``We don´t believe that these two acted alone,´´ Chitwood said in an interview.
Police are investigating the two young men from Mantua, where Burns and Johnson are also from.
The 17-year-old is awaiting trial on the attempted-murder charges, as well as aggravated-assault charges and a variety of weapons offenses. The court file is sealed because he is a juvenile.
The 19-year-old was arrested in January 1999, when he was only 15, and charged with shooting at a school acquaintance during a street confrontation in Mantua.
A month after his acquittal that year, he was charged with ramming his car into another vehicle and shooting the driver in the foot. Those charges were dropped in August 2000.
No warrants had been issued for the pair as of Wednesday night.
With those suspects still at large and reporters still around the area, police stationed a squad car in front of Erica's home, where she had been abducted while playing outside with a 5-year-old neighbor.
Erica escaped Tuesday after she gnawed her way through the duct tape that bound her.
What prompted the abduction remained unclear Wednesday. Police have been pursuing a theory that the kidnappers thought, wrongly, that Erica's family had recently come into an insurance payout. Investigators have also been seeking to determine if the crime was related to continuing drug rivalries in the area.
Immediately after Erica was abducted, her grandmother received several calls from a man who threatened to kill the girl unless he received a $150,000 ransom.
Neighbors said there had been widespread rumors that the family recently received a big insurance payment after the March murder of Erica's uncle, Joseph Pratt, who was shot while he sat in his car in West Philadelphia.
He had a lengthy arrest record, including charges of attempted murder, drug possession and weapons violations.
Documents reviewed by The Philadelphia Inquirer showed that the beneficiary of Joseph Pratt's insurance policy was his wife, who did not live at the Pratts' family home on Kingsessing Avenue.
Joseph Pratt was awaiting trial on a charge of attempted murder when he was killed. He had been convicted of aggravated assault and drug possession.
Another uncle, Derrick Pratt, was wounded in a brazen downtown assassination attempt in February during the NBA All-Star Game weekend. About 10 years ago, he was acquitted of a double murder.
Erica's father, Eric Pratt, is on probation after pleading guilty in 1998 to drug dealing. Her mother, Sarina Gillis, was arrested last year on a drug-possession charge.
Police said the Pratt family knew Burns and Johnson.
Burns had been arrested in December after a shooting outside Derrick Pratt's home in Mantua.
Whatever the motive, the plot was foiled with the girl's escape.
After Erica broke out of the basement of the Logan house, where the kidnappers hid her for a day, two neighborhood children pulled her out of a window. One of them rode a bike to alert the police.
``She´s an amazing little girl,´´ Chief Inspector Davis said at Wednesday´s news conference.
