‘Help’ sign leads to girl’s rescue

The 13-year-old girl had been kidnapped at gunpoint, taken by car across several states and sexually assaulted by a man nearly half a century older than she was — but it took just two words written on a piece of paper to save her, prosecutors said.

The girl scrawled “Help Me!” in red pen on a torn piece of paper on July 9 as she sat in a silver Nissan Sentra outside a laundromat on East 10th Street in Long Beach, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.

A passerby saw the girl holding the sign and called police, authorities said. Responding officers removed the girl from the car after she mouthed, “Help.”

Steven Sablan, 61, was arrested and charged with kidnapping and transporting a minor across state lines with the intent to engage in illegal sexual activity, prosecutors said. He was indicted in federal court Thursday.

Sablan’s lawyer declined to comment on the case.

On July 6, the girl, referred to in the government’s criminal complaint only as “Ash,” left her home and was walking down a street in San Antonio when a man pulled over and pointed what appeared to be a black handgun at her, prosecutors said.

“If you don’t get in the car with me, I am going to hurt you,” the man told her, according to the complaint. Fearing for her safety, the girl got into his car, prosecutors said.

He asked her name and age, and she told him she was 13, according to court records.

After she told her abductor that she had a friend in Australia, he said he would take her on a cruise ship to visit the friend — but he said that she first would “need to do something for him,” prosecutors said in the complaint.

He then pulled over and sexually abused the girl, the complaint alleges.

Over the next two days, he drove Ash across multiple state lines from Texas to California, stopping more than once to sexually abuse her, prosecutors said.

Three days after he abducted her, he stopped the car outside a laundromat in Long Beach to wash their clothes and left Ash in the car, leading to her rescue, authorities said.

Police found a black plastic BB gun in Sablan’s car and a pair of silver handcuffs in his back pocket, the complaint stated. They also found a switchblade knife.

Sablan was considered “armed and dangerous” at the time because he was wanted on a burglary charge out of Fort Worth, prosecutors said.