A man found guilty of trying to abduct a 10-year-old girl from a sidewalk in South Philly nearly two years ago will spend up to the next 34 years behind bars.
Philadelphia Common Please Judge Alice Dubrow sentenced Carlos Figueroa-Fagot to 17 to 34 years behind bars for trying to twice abduct the girl as she walked home from getting water ice with her brother.
Figueroa-Fagot was found guilty last year on charges which include attempted kidnapping, unlawful contact with a minor, corruption of minors, assault and related offenses.
Dubrow handed him down a 10- to 20-year sentence for kidnapping and 3-1/2- to 7-years for the child sexual contact and interference with custody of child charges to be served consecutively.
All the other counts will be served concurrently to the most serious counts.
Surveillance video showed Figueroa-Fagot trying twice to abduct the girl from the 2400 block of S. Lee Street, according to prosecutors.
Tips started coming in to police after the video was released and then the suspect's own family and a priest convinced him to turn himself in. Figueroa-Fagot, who is unemployed, admitted to police that once the video got out, he felt trapped.
Police say Figueroa-Fagot, now 35, turned himself in because he "felt that he could not walk, talk or breathe out there."
He wore a Sesame Street T-shirt with Elmo and Cookie Monster on it that says, "Every Day I'm Shufflin'" as police led him out of the Special Victims Unit the day he was arrested.
Police say the video is one of the most disturbing things they've seen.
"It is gripping, to say the least. It is disturbing," said Special Victims Unit Capt. John Darby.
The victim and her little brother were walking home just before 4 p.m. after getting water ice a couple of blocks away. In the video you see the man come up from behind them. He grabs the little girl and tries to run off with her. She kicks and bites him and falls to the ground.
"She will fight tooth and nail with anybody," said the victim's mother. "He definitely picked the wrong girl that day, that time."
In the video, you can see that after she falls, the man tries a second time to take the little girl away. At that point, her 2-year-old brother lets out a scream that was apparently loud enough to scare off the attacker.
"Ultimately, with the screams from this little boy and by her account [the victim] she says the child literally screams louder than anything she's ever heard before, he literally interrupts this assault," Darby said.
According to court records, Figueroa-Fagot was charged in Feb. 2011 with a sexual assault on a minor family member. Those charges were withdrawn because the victim and her mother claimed they made up the story, police said.
Photo Credit: NBC10 Philadelphia