An unnamed teen made a desperate move behind the wheel Friday and her quick thinking very well might have saved her life.
45-year-old Floribert Nava (above), who the teen is said to have known, demanded at gunpoint that she be driven to the home of a Philadelphia couple who had adopted a child that Nava desperately wanted for her own.
The abduction occurred in the teen’s hometown of Wildwood, New Jersey and continued for 90 minutes until the teen decided to take matters into her own hands. As the car reached the Ben Franklin Bridge, the teen quickly turned the wheel, purposefully side-swiping a Delaware River Port Authority police car that was parked on the shoulder assisting a stranded motorist.
She then leaped from the crashed vehicle and informed the officer on duty that she had been kidnapped.
Nava was placed under arrest and a search of the car revealed an airsoft pistol, latex gloves and a bag containing duct tape. Airsoft pistols do not shoot standard issue bullets but discharge small plastic pellets which can pierce skin at close range. Some of these can be indistinguishable from real firearms which may have aided in the kidnapping, officials stated.
Nava has been charged with kidnapping in the first degree and three other crimes — terroristic threats in the third degree, possession of a weapon in the third degree and possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose in the third degree.
Cape May County Prosecutor Robert Taylor said of the girl’s actions, “It certainly was a smart move by the victim.”
In protecting the victim’s identity, it is unclear if she was the mother of the adopted child in question. Nava and the teen were said to have had an argument over the adopted child on a previous occasion.
