Overview
- Newly released video shows deputies stopping a pickup after a citizen reported suspicious activity involving a registered sex offender and two boys.
- Investigators identified the driver as 60-year-old Darnell Hairston, who is charged with multiple felonies including kidnapping and aggravated child abuse and is being held without bond.
- Deputies said the 11-year-old, reported missing from St. Johns County three days earlier, told them he was kidnapped, choked unconscious, threatened with a knife and a gun, bound, gagged, and hidden on the truck floorboard.
- As deputies moved to take Hairston into custody, he fled on foot, and a second boy later led a dangerous vehicle chase that ended when the teen rammed a patrol car into the woods.
- Authorities said the rescued child was safely recovered, while the 15-year-old now faces multiple charges and is being investigated as a possible co-conspirator.