Alyssa Bonal Wiki - Alyssa Bonal Biography
Alyssa Bonal, the victim of the attempted kidnapping, said her daughter told her that she was playing with homemade slime while waiting for her bus Tuesday morning when she saw the man running toward her.
"Her first words were, 'Somebody tried to kidnap me. He grabbed me by my throat and he had a knife.' She said she was able to kick and she tripped him and freed herself," Amber Bonal told the News Journal in an exclusive interview Wednesday morning, a little more than 24 hours after the attack. "She said, 'Mom, I had to leave some sort of evidence behind, like on Law & Order SVU.' We've watched probably every episode on Hulu. She's a smart cookie, she thinks on her toes. She got that slime everywhere."
Alyssa Bonal Age
Alyssa Bonal is 11 years old.
The girl who fought off kidnapper helped catch suspect thanks to ‘Law & Order
The blue dye from the slime as part of the evidence that led police to 30-year-old Jared Paul Stanga, who was arrested and charged Tuesday night in the attempted kidnapping case. Escambia County Sheriff Chip Simmons said Stanga had a white Dodge Journey at his home like the one seen on surveillance video used in the attack and the vehicle had a matching license plate. Simmons said Stanga tried to paint over the front chrome bumper with black paint by the time deputies came knocking on his door.
The sheriff also said Stanga still had blue dye on his arms, just like the kind Alyssa had said she left behind on him.
Stanga was taken into custody without incident Tuesday evening and charged with attempted kidnapping, aggravated assault and battery. He made his first appearance in court Wednesday when a judge set his bond at more than $1.5 million.
In court Wednesday, Stanga’s defense attorney, Robert Dees, cast doubt on whether his client is the right suspect, saying the girl was unable to select him definitively in a photo lineup and she initially described him as Hispanic while Stanga is Caucasian.
The Bonal family, meanwhile, is still reeling from the attempted kidnapping. Alyssa is doing well, her mother said, although she doesn't think she's fully grasped just how close she came to being taken away.
"If she would have been taken …" Amber said, covering her eyes as she began to cry, her voice trailing away. "If she would have been taken, I could have lost her forever."
Tuesday started out as a normal school day for the Bonal family.
Amber, 30, has her own cleaning business, although she hasn't been able to find work for the past year or so due to the pandemic. She lives in a Hurricane Sally-damaged trailer off of Old Corry Field Road with Alyssa, as well as her teenage son, Christopher, her 18-month-old daughter, Jazzlyn, and their dog, Boo.
Amber said Wednesday that she has been trying to move her family to "a better part of town," although she hasn't been able to come up with the money for the move due to being out of work during the pandemic. She just recently got her family on food stamps and is barely able to make rent each month.
Still, young Alyssa has taken the recent financial hardships in stride, helping with grocery shopping and child care when she wasn't excelling in school at West Pensacola Elementary, where she recently made the A/B honor roll.
"She's very smart. She loves school," Amber said. "She's very shy and timid, but once the outer shell goes away, she's just a ball of energy. She's very funny, spunky, different. She’s the kid that wears the different type of clothes. She gets picked on sometimes and she’d come home and talked to me about it, and for a while she had trouble making friends due to her uniqueness. But now she's got some good friends, they do girl talk on the phone, it's adorable."
Alyssa's bus stop used to be at the end of the driveway where Amber's trailer and a few other trailers sit. But because of a bus driver shortage, Escambia County School District moved Alyssa's bus stop about 50 yards away from her driveway to the corner of busy Old Corry Field Road and Perdido Street about halfway through the school year.
On April 29, two weeks before the attempted kidnapping, Amber said Alyssa came home from school and told her that a strange man had approached her and made her feel uneasy.
"She told me that a man in a white car pulled up, spoke to her and said 'hello' or 'Hola' or something," she said. "He proceeded to get out of the car, and then that’s when she ran off to the next bust stop and got on the bus. She went to school, told her teacher and the teacher told the principal."
Amber said no one from the school district called her that day or any other day to make sure her daughter was OK or to inquire more about the incident. Amber said that made her angry.
"Why didn't anybody call me? My child was almost kidnapped, or had a bad interaction, and nobody called me back," she said. "I called transportation to try and talk to them about it, but nobody called me back, so I told the kids and parents at our bus stop and the other two near it about what happened."
Escambia County School District Superintendent Tim Smith told the News Journal on Wednesday that the principal spoke to Alyssa after learning of the incident and called Amber and left her a voicemail. Amber vehemently denies ever receiving a call back from the school district.
Ever since that incident, Amber has been walking with Alyssa to the bus stop and waiting with her until she gets on her bus. On Tuesday morning, Amber was planning to walk with Alyssa again to the stop, but as they were walking out the door, she realized 18-month-old Jazzlyn needed a diaper change.
"We were running late. She usually leaves for the bus stop at 6:50, and it was 6:52," Amber said. "I told her to go ahead and I would be out there in a minute, I start changing the baby’s diaper. I hadn’t even finished changing the diaper before she ran back in the house. Her hair was all messed up, she had slime everywhere and I asked her what was going on. I thought maybe she had been hit by a car, but I never would have thought somebody would have tried to take her."
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