Tens of thousands of people go missing yearly. They go missing because of many things like, kidnapping, running away, misadventure, hiding and many more. I’m going to be exploring kidnapping, which happens the most. Cases like Amber Hagerman who was a 9-year-old kidnapped in Dallas/Fort Worth when she was just riding her bike in her front yard when she was stolen, highlights this issue. I think that kidnapping is one of the simplest crimes to be committed, sometimes it’s as simple as grabbing a child and forcing them into a vehicle and driving away. 

2,300 people are kidnapped daily. That’s almost 8 MILLION a year. This can happen because of social media, stalkers and random people. This can happen at play dates, it could happen at daycare, it can happen just with someone walking on the side of the street taking a stroll. This can happen in many many different ways and I think that sometimes there’s no way of stopping it because of some of those things like simply walking your dog. Lots of kidnappings result in murder so it’s unlucky but a lot of people can’t help it. 

There was a large kidnapping case of this girl Amanda Berry who was kidnapped just before she turned 17 and she was imprisoned and abused for 10 years until she finally managed to escape in May of 2013. She was able to tell officers where she was held captive and was also able to provide rescue to two other victims that were held by a man named Ariel Castro. After the three girls were rescued, Ariel was then sentenced to life in prison plus a thousand years in prison which basically just means you’re going to be in prison until you die. But he ended up killing himself only about a month into his sentencing. Before he was taken to jail he pleaded to raping and abusing these women 970 times which caused one woman to be pregnant 5 times but was forced to miscarry four out of the five times.  Each of the three women’s cases were all simple cases like getting rides home from co-workers, walking home from school instead of opting to take a public bus home, nd the last one is unknown on how she disappeared but only says that she was last seen at her cousin’s house which was where they believed that she was kidnapped from. 

Because a lot of people are kidnapped daily, it’s important that people take this issue seriously and work to keep themselves safe. Some of the only things we can do is carry safety tools on us which include pepper spray and getting your gun certification where you can keep a gun on you. It’s extremely important to acknowledge that kidnapping could happen to anyone, so you need to keep people from harming you.