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Teen Arrested For Abducting, Sexually Assaulting, And Beating 5-Year-Old Girl

By Angelique Johnson
Published on: 04:02 PST, Aug 18, 2015

A teen boy has been arrested and accused of breaking into a North Philadelphia home then abducting, sexually assaulting and beating a 5-year-old girl unconscious last month, and leaving her for dead.

Police say that the 15-year old teen is known to frequent the neighborhood where the assault occurred.

He faces multiple charges including attempted murder, aggravated assault, rape, kidnapping, unlawful restraint, false imprisonment, sexual assault, aggravated indecent assault, simple assault, and recklessly endangering another person.

The 15-year-old teen was arrested Monday night. He was processed and taken to the 25th District headquarters to be held overnight until he is eventually transferred to the Youth Study Center.

As the District Attorney is still trying to determine if the teen will be charged as an adult, police have not released his identity.

The little girl’s mother, Vyneeka Hopkins, 29, told NBC 10 that she woke up around 7 a.m. on July 28 to discover that the youngest of her two daughters was missing. She and her 9-year-old daughter frantically searched the home for the missing 5-year-old and even enlisted the help of neighbors to search the rest of neighborhood on Hutchinson Street near Lehigh Avenue.

“I called neighbors to search my house one more time to make sure I’m not crazy [not being able to find her inside]. One neighbor was upstairs and looked out the window… down in the yard that’s overgrown with weeds, and was screaming, ‘I found her! I found her!'”

Hopkins ran out the back door of her home to find her daughter, still wearing the same T-shirt she had gone to bed in the previous night, lying unconscious, covered in blood.

“I thought she was dead. I was just crying and screaming.”

When Hopkins picked up the blood-stained 5-year-old, she woke up and proceeded to tell her mother that she had woken up in the early hours of the morning and stepped out of her bedroom. There, she was confronted by a man in the hallway. She then told her mother that the man grabbed her and took her outside, where he proceeded to assault and beat her.

The 5-year-old girl suffered a broken jaw, fractures to her skull, a bruised liver, and other injuries, according to her mother. Investigators also report that the girl had injuries that indicate sexual assault.

She was taken by police to St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children for treatment.

“None of [her injuries], thank God, led to any internal brain damage or bleeding. Both of her eyes are swollen shut. She can’t even open her eyes right now, but she’s in good spirits. She has to do a strictly liquid diet for the next six weeks.”

Philadelphia Police Captain John Darby said: “It’s about as bad as it gets. We’re looking at this as a stranger residential intrusion and child abduction, and an aggravated assault on that child.”

Hopkins, who is no longer staying in the house where the assault occurred, describes her daughter as a fighter.

“She’s so resilient and she’s not letting what happened affect her so negatively to where it stops her life.”

Hopkins has created a GoFundMe to help cover her daughter’s medical expenses as a result of the attack by the teen.

There has been a dramatic rise in the cases of a teen committing a violent act on a young child.

Just last month, the death of 8-year-old Madyson “Maddy” Middleton made headlines as she was raped and killed by 15-year-old teen Adrian Jerry Gonzalez.

Gonzalez was arrested and charged as an adult.

What do you think about this 15-year-old teen abducting, sexually assaulting, and beating this 5-year-old girl? What should his punishment be? Should the teen be charged as an adult?

[Image via GoFundMe]

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