Santa Fe College police recovered a student's backpack Sunday morning, three days after she was kidnapped, but officers are still searching for the culprit.
The victim, an 18-year-old Trenton woman whose name has not been released, is safe. She jumped out of the suspect's truck hours after being abducted in a school parking lot.
The victim is unsure of the man's race, though she said his complexion is dark, according to an Alachua County Sheriff's Office statement. The suspect stands somewhere between 5 feet 8 inches and 5 feet 11 inches, and he is in his late 20s or early 30s.
He has short hair, an unshaven face and a right hand marked with a tattoo, according to the Sheriff's Office. He was wearing a dark hoodie and jeans Thursday.
His pickup truck is small and a dark color. It has dark-tinted windows and a gray interior.
The suspect forced the woman into his pickup truck at gunpoint between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. on Thursday. The woman rode in the front of the truck, gun pressed against her, for a couple hours before jumping out of the vehicle when it slowed down on Northwest 39th Avenue, Sheriff's Office spokesman Art Forgey said.
The victim ran toward a neighborhood, and a woman in the 1200 block of Northwest 39th Avenue called 911 at 7:50 p.m. reporting that she heard someone screaming for help. The victim last saw the suspect driving west.
The search began when the woman's parents called the Santa Fe College Police Department around 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Forgey said. They noticed something was wrong when their daughter wasn't home in time for dinner.
The parents told SFPD where their daughter normally parks, and officers found evidence of a struggle near her car.
While they were in the parking lot, a witness told the officers two men were riffling through a backpack before taking it Thursday evening. Police searched the campus a couple times but came up short.
The Sheriff's Office released a statement Saturday saying officers were trying to find the white backpack, which has vertical lines of hearts on it. Daryl Johnston, the director of Santa Fe College's Institute of Public Safety, found the backpack sitting in a grass field on the northwest corner of campus around 11 a.m. on Sunday.
Anyone with knowledge of the kidnapping should call the Sheriff's Office at 352-955-1818. If you wish to remain anonymous, you can call Crime Stoppers at 352-372-7867.
