‘Help me!’: Scrawled sign helps save 13-year-old kidnapping victim in Long Beach

The 13-year-old girl had been kidnapped at gun point, taken by car across several states and was sexually assaulted by a man nearly half a century older than she was — but it took just two words written on a piece of paper to save herself, federal prosecutors said.

“Help Me!” the girl scrawled in red pen on July 9 on a torn piece of paper as she sat in the silver Nissan Sentra outside a laundromat on East 10th Street in Long Beach, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.

A passerby noticed the girl holding up the sign and called police, authorities said. Responding officers removed the girl from the car after she mouthed the word “help.”

Steven Sablan, 61, was arrested and charged with kidnapping and transporting a minor across state lines with the intent to engage in illegal sexual activity, prosecutors said. He was indicted in federal court Thursday.

Sablan’s attorney declined to comment on the case.

On July 6 the girl, referred to in the federal government’s criminal complaint only as “Ash,” left home and was walking down the street in San Antonio when a man pulled over and pointed a black handgun at her, according to prosecutors.

“If you don’t get in the car with me, I am going to hurt you,” he said to the young girl, according to the complaint.

Fearing for her safety, the girl got into his car, prosecutors said.

He asked Ash for her name and age and she told him she was 13, according to court records.

She told the kidnapper that she had a friend who lived in Australia and he said he would take her on a cruise ship to visit the friend, prosecutors said in the complaint.

But he said that she first would “need to do something for him,” according to the complaint.

He then pulled over and sexually abused the girl, the complaint alleges.

Over the next two days, he drove Ash across state lines, taking her from Texas to California, stopping more than once to sexually abuse the girl, prosecutors said.

Three days after he kidnapped her, he stopped the car outside a laundromat in Long Beach to wash their clothes and left the girl in the car, leading to her rescue, authorities said.

Police officers at the scene discovered a black plastic BB gun in Sablan’s car as well as a pair of silver handcuffs in his back pocket, the complaint stated. They also found a switchblade knife.

Sablan was considered “armed and dangerous” at the time because he was wanted on a burglary charge out of Fort Worth, prosecutors said.