In a spine-chilling incident, a vigilant truck driver, who goes by the name Michael, became a hero by alerting authorities about a deeply unsettling situation.
Michael was parked in a rest area off I-10 in a border state when he witnessed a pick-up truck pull up nearby. A man and woman proceeded to unlock a padlocked cage beneath a tarp in the back of the truck, from which they released several children.
According to the video uploaded by the truck driver, the kidnappers were seen ushering the children into and out of a bathroom at the rest area before locking them back into the cage.
“I’m sitting at a rest area. This truck pulls up, opens up the back. It’s like a cage-looking thing… That guy and this lady have a whole bunch of kids in the back of that truck… And then they take the padlock off, raise the tarp, and all these kids come out the back, and they’re forcing them into the bathroom,” Michael said.
“When they coming back out, they were pushing the kids back in there, locked them back in there, and pulled the f-cking tarp down.”
The truck driver’s instincts kicked in as he noticed the children were being pushed into the bathroom and then locked back into padlocked cages under a tarp in the back of the pick-up truck. Recognizing that something was wrong, he decided to call 911.
“I called 911… I don’t know what’s going on. I’m not real big on calling the cops, but when it comes to kids and their safety and with all this human trafficking and all this crap going on in the world, not cool. So I call the cops just to be on the safe side,” Michael added.
The truck driver describes how the kidnappers started to take off when they saw him on the phone.
“They see me on the phone. They’re watching me in the mirror the whole time. They f-cking take off,” said Michael.
“The cops on the phone with me told me to follow them as close as you can, as much as you can until we get units out,” he said. Despite not being able to keep up with the fleeing vehicle due to his truck’s limitations, he managed to provide valuable information that enabled law enforcement to locate and stop the kidnappers.
“They finally caught up to them because I couldn’t keep up with them. My truck only goes seven. They catch up to them, they pull them over,” Michael recounted. Child services were subsequently called to the scene.
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Michael stated in an interview with Mutha Trucker that there were approximately 15 children trapped within the cage.
“In the article, it said that you thought you saw, like, three or four kids, and then they didn’t really give a number. But was it more than ten because they made it sound like it was a lot.”
“It was about 15, I would say,” Michael said.
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Earlier this month, the Truckload Carriers Association (TCA) named truck driver Michael a “Highway Angel” for his heroic rescue of caged children.
Highway Angel reported:
The Truckload Carriers Association (TCA) has named truck driver Michael (his full name and hometown have been excluded to protect his identity) a TCA Highway Angel for discovering, turning in and chasing human traffickers with multiple children in a cage in the back of a pickup truck.
Michael said the little girls that he saw were no older than three or four years old. When the two adults and little girls came back out of the bathroom, the driver of the pickup forced the kids back into the cage, locked it, and covered the cage in a tarp. Michael called the police, and was able to walk around in the dark to read the truck’s license plate. Somehow the two adults in the pickup truck must have noticed him, because they took off quickly in the truck. Michael followed them.
Michael also pulled over and waited till the police were ready to speak with him to get his statement. Police told Michael that “this kind of thing happens all the time”, several of the children had been reported missing, and that there were even more children in the cage. “In the cage, there were hammocks with kids draped across the top,” Michael said, “and the entire bottom of the cage was filled with children.”
Police also told him for his own protection he should depart, in case anyone affiliated with the human traffickers was watching. The father of two young children (including a little girl) Michael was emotionally distraught after the nightmarish discovery.
“It’s really scary,” he said.
Since the TCA Highway Angels program’s inception in August 1997, nearly 1,300 professional truck drivers have been recognized as Highway Angels for exemplary kindness, courtesy, and courage displayed while on the job. Thanks to the program’s presenting sponsor, EpicVue, and supporting sponsor, DriverFacts, TCA is able to showcase outstanding drivers like Michael.
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