According to a post on Albert Lea PD’s social media,<\/a> 28-year-old Joseph Andrew Bragg was arrested early Thursday following the 7-year-old’s safe return.<\/p>\nOfficials said the girl was abducted around 4 p.m. after she got off the bus from school. She was reported missing about 6:30 p.m. in Zimmerman, where about 200 law enforcement officers and 700 community members turned out to search.<\/p>\n
The child was gone for more than eight hours before investigators tracked her to a vehicle traveling south on Interstate 35 in Albert Lea. Police said officers conducted a traffic stop and safely recovered the child before apprehending the man.<\/p>\n
The 7-year-old was reportedly taken to the hospital for a medical evaluation and later reunited with her family, according to the post.<\/p>\n
The relationship between the man and child is still unclear. Drew Evans, superintendent of the Minnesota BCA, said the man does not have a significant criminal history.<\/p>\n
“This is every family’s worst nightmare,” Evans said, calling the Bragg a “frankly evil individual.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Evans advised parents to talk to their kids about school pick-up and children’s social media usage to avoid dangerous encounters with strangers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Talk to your kids. If it is an individual that approaches them, unless you specifically as a parent tell them that this individual is picking them up, then they should not go with that person,” Evans said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The child was gone for more than eight hours before investigators tracked her to a vehicle traveling south…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":423542,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-423541","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}