14 DAY TRIAL // A ten-year-old boy was abducted from his house in Atlanta, Georgia, on March 31, and managed to escape after annoying his kidnapper with a gospel song.
Willie Myrick was outside his house when an unknown man approached him and lured him with money. Then, when the youngster was close enough, the suspect grabbed him and shoved him into a vehicle, taking him on a three-hour ride around Atlanta.
What saved little Willie from this hellish experience was a gospel song that he refused to stop singing. To the abductor's despair, the boy insistently repeated Hezekiah Walker's “Every Praise” during the ride, and the suspect was so annoyed that he decided to let him go.
Willie's ordeal ended after three hours, when he was eventually dropped off unharmed in East Point. The boy says that while he was singing, the man kept cursing and asking him to stop, but he wouldn't.
“He opened the door and threw me out. He told me not to tell anyone,” the boy told a local television station, as reported by New York Daily News.
Hezekiah Walker, the original singer of the popular song, is a Grammy-award winning gospel singer. After he learned about the attempted kidnapping, Walker decided to fly to Atlanta to visit Willie. The two met at Mt. Carmel Baptist Church in southwest Atlanta, on the boy's 10th birthday.
“I just wanted to hug him and tell him I love him,” the singer said. “I really believe that God spoke through me to save that young man's life.”
Myrick's family and friends also attended the emotional meeting, which took place on Thursday. They all sang “Every Praise” together, and tears came to Willie's eyes when Walker hugged him.
The reunion was both a celebration of the little boy's bravery and quick thinking, and a town hall meeting designed to warn parents and children about the dangers still present on the city's streets.
“Our concern is not just the city of Atlanta boundaries. It's the society in general. It's metro Atlanta. We've seen a number of attacks,” organizer Michael Langford said.
The alleged kidnapper is still on the loose, but police has released a sketch of the suspect and is asking the community for help in tracking him down. The abductor has been described as a man in his mid- to late-20s with dreadlocks. A $10,000 (€7,242) reward is being offered on the suspect's arrest.