She had been dragged kicking and screaming on Monday from the street outside her home into the kidnappers' car, and her distraught Philadelphia family feared the worst. But a grinning, unhurt seven-year-old Erica Pratt was back in her grandmother's arms yesterday after 24 hours captivity and an escape that has made her a nationwide celebrity.
Blindfolded and tied up with duct tape in an abandoned basement while her kidnappers sought a $150,000 ransom from her family, Erica gnawed through the tape, forced her way through a locked door, and broke a first floor window to successfully summon help from two 10-year-old boys in the street. They helped her through the window as a friend cycled off to find a police patrol.
Two men in their 20s, both with violent criminal records and known to the family, are being sought by police. They were investigating the possibility that the abduction had been sparked by rumours that the family had recently received an insurance settlement for the murder of Erica's uncle in March. The family has denied receiving any payment.
Erica Pratt lives with her grandmother in a terraced house in the deprived, rundown and largely black southwest of Philadelphia, an area ravaged by the drug wars that saw her uncle riddled with bullets only months ago.
She had been returning home from a street party with a five-year-old friend when a battered sedan pulled up beside her. One of the kidnappers called out, "Erica, come here."
When she refused the driver jumped out and grabbed her. Within 20 minutes her grandmother had received the first of six calls demanding cash or Erica would die.
She was imprisoned on a filthy mattress in the basement of a house 10 miles away, her eyes, hands and legs taped up, and with only a bottle of juice and a packet of crisps. There was no light or air-conditioning.
"You wouldn't keep a dog like that," said Lieut Michael Chitwood. "It was absolute squalor."
At about 8 p.m. on Tuesday night, after hours of gnawing and pulling at the duct tape, Erica freed herself and managed to escape.
"She's an amazing little girl," Chief Insp Robert Davis said.