Charges against grandson shock family; would-be kidnapping victims recount harrowing encounters
FORT LAUDERDALE - A grandmother is stunned after her grandson, Rondel McDonald is arrested.
"He would always tell me grandma, I'm making you proud," said Jennie Francois.
McDonald is charged with kidnapping a teenage girl in Fort Lauderdale at gunpoint and sexually assaulting her. He's also accused of trying to kidnap two others.
"That's not Rondel. Everybody that know Rondel know that's not Rondel, something was wrong I don't know what," his grandfather Garford Francois said.
McDonald is facing a total of 12 charges for the three cases; investigators say he confessed to each of them. In all three cases, he's accused of driving up to young girls, pulling a gun and ordering them into his car.
"He pointed the gun at me, and then he pointed it at the car, and he was like, 'So get in the car,' and I continued backing up. I was like, please, you don't have to do this," said one of the would-be victims.
She took off running.
"I ended up tripping on a stump behind me and I used that as a distraction and I took off running towards my friend's house," she said.
She did exactly what security experts suggest.
"You must fight and resist any possibility with respect to someone forcing you into that car. If you force, if you are forced into a car, the probability or the chances are that you are not going to survive this attack," said Stuart Kaplan. He is a former FBI agent and security expert. He said your first defense is to run.
"While you're running, you must summon the alarm, that is, scream as loud as you can, and, if possible, simultaneously, if you can do it, is to call 9 1 1. I would tell people don't stop," he said.
If you can't get away, Kaplan said to fight like your life depends on it.
"The first thing I would do is to strike the person in the throat, flush in the nose, or to try to take out their eyes, meaning to strike them in the eyes, and I don't mean strike them in a fist as if you're punching someone in the eye, but literally trying to gouge out their eyes."