If it wasn't for an observant Target employee, a missing little girl may not have been found.
Roxana Ramirez, an employee at a Pittsburg, California Target, is being credited for helping police capture a man suspected of kidnapping a 7-year-old girl. Ramirez, Target's shoplifting prevention specialist, felt something was not right when she saw the man, David Douglas, inside the store on Jan. 3.
"He was just being weird," Ramirez, 22, told CBS News. "Like, his activities were not normal."
Ramirez kept a watchful eye on Douglas even after he left the store.
"He was pacing back and forth. He was changing his clothes in the parking lot. He started messing around with his backpack," Ramirez told CBS News. "And at one point, he was sitting in the car, shaking his steering wheel."
Ramirez followed Douglas outside the store and wrote down his license plate number. Police later issued an Amber Alert for a missing 7-year-old girl, and gave a description of a man, later identified as Douglas, who might have taken her, the New York Daily News reported.
Ramirez called the police and gave them the license plate number. Police found the girl and arrested Douglas 45 minutes later, the Daily News reported.
Lieutenant Tammany Brooks lauded Ramirez for her actions.
"What she did was what truly broke the case," Brooks said, the Daily News reported.
Douglas, whose been living in his car for the last two months, admitted to NBC News in a jailhouse interview, that he did take the girl. He followed the girl and her family from a Wal-Mart before taking her from outside her home.
"I took her because it was arranged for me to take her," Douglas said, "I didn't know what I was going to with her but I know it was not to harm her in any way."
Police found the girl unharmed and returned her to her mother four hours after she was abducted, the Daily News reported.
"I'm happy that the girl is with her family," Ramirez told CBS News. "I'm happy that she gets to live the childhood that she deserves. I hope she puts this tragic thing behind her."
