Wichita girl, 15, abducted and raped while walking home
A 15-year-old Wichita girl abducted and raped at knife point while she was walking home escaped and ran toward police officers after someone reported that she’d been kidnapped Monday evening.
Anthony Craig Seymour, 58, of Wichita, was booked into the Sedgwick County Jail early Tuesday morning on suspicion of kidnapping, rape, aggravated battery, aggravated criminal sodomy and a Kansas Department of Corrections parole violation warrant, jail records show. He previously served prison time for raping a 14-year-old girl in 2003 and is a registered sex offender, according to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation’s offender registry.
Wichita police Capt. Brent Allred said Tuesday during a news briefing that the girl was walking home from a local Dillons store when Seymour approached her, threatened her with a knife and forced her into his car. He sexually assaulted the girl, Allred said.
Officers responded to a call about the girl’s abduction in the area of 300 N. Volutsia around 6:20 p.m. Officers drove around the neighborhood and found Seymour trying to leave the area in a 2005 black Lexus ES, Allred said.
Police saw the girl jump out of Seymour’s car while it was moving “very slowly,” Allred said. She ran toward the officers.
“She’s a very brave young lady,” Allred said.
Seymour drove off and officers lost sight of him. “But they were able to do some follow up on this case,” Allred said, and later found Seymour with the Lexus in the 1900 block of North Lorraine.
The KBI’s offender registry shows Seymour lives in that area.
“A diligent investigation by the officers out there led to the suspect,” who was arrested without any problems, Allred said. That investigation included finding the girl’s phone in a parking lot, gathering video footage from the area and the tag number of Seymour’s car.
The girl was taken to a Wichita hospital for treatment. Allred said the police department will present the findings of its investigation to the Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office for prosecution.
Seymour had not been formally charged with any crime associated with the girl’s abduction and assault as of Tuesday morning.
Allred said Seymour approached the girl twice on Monday — once while she was walking to the Dillons store and then when she was walking home — but he didn’t turn violent until he forced her into his car at knife point.
A person who saw the girl being abducted called 911, Allred said. Police don’t think Seymour and the girl know one another.
“She was aware of her surroundings. She didn’t get into the car the first time. ... She made a couple phone calls to some friends and stuff like that to notify them that something suspicious was going on,” Allred said of the girl.
“She did not ... do anything wrong.”
Allred said Tuesday that random abductions are “pretty uncommon here in Wichita.”
But the case is at least the second this year where a local child has been kidnapped by a stranger.
In May, an 8-year-old playing outside of a west-side motel was snatched and forced into a storage shed by a man who police say tried to molest her. Daniel Withrow, a 40-year-old registered sex offender, is scheduled for a December trial on counts of kidnapping and attempted aggravated indecent liberties with a child younger than 14 in the case.
“We don’t see these very often,” Allred said of child abductions. “It is a very serious and concerning incident when you have something like this happen, especially with a juvenile female.”
The 15-year-old girl in Monday’s abduction “did a tremendous job of getting out of the vehicle, locating the officers and telling them what happened,” he said.
In the 2003 rape case, Seymour was ordered to serve a total of 184 months, or just over 15 years, in prison, court records show. Initially prosecutors charged with him with two criminal counts — aggravated kidnapping and rape — but he pleaded guilty to only the latter.
Prior to that case, his criminal history included only misdemeanors for crimes like theft, criminal trespass, possession of marijuana and cocaine and battery, according to court records.
This story was originally published November 19, 2019 at 11:08 AM.
