A 16-year-old girl who was reported missing from Asheville in the USA, two days ago was saved on Thursday after she used popular hand signals from TikTok which is a signal indicating that she was at risk of abuse and needs help.
While travelling through Kentucky in a passenger seat of a car, she waved the hand signs through the window to passing cars. One person in a nearby car recognized the distress signal of tucking the thumb into the palm before closing the fingers over it, from TikTok and alerted the police.
The signal was created by the Canadian Women’s foundation and was popularized through the popular social media app TikTok, which is curently banned in India.
Even though the police was unfamiliar with the signal, they pulled the car over to investigate and learned that the girl’s parents had reported her missing two days ago.
The American police arrested the driver, James Herbert Brick, 61 and charged him with unlawful imprisonment. The police stated that the accused had pornographic images of a child on his phone, and also faces charges of child pornography.
Gilbert Acciardo, public affairs officer for the Laurel County Sheriff’s office said that the girl and the accused were “acquaintances”, however, they are not related. She told investigators that she had travelled with James Herbert Brick through North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio where the accused had a family.
He reportedly left the family after they learned that the girl was a minor and that she had been reported missing by her family.