Snapchat successfully helped a kidnapped hostage

A kidnapped American girl was rescued last week with help from the messaging app Snapchat.

According to information from the San Jose Police Department, California, USA, a man named Albert Thomas Vasquez, 55, and his accomplices Antonio Quirino Salvador and Heriberto Gonzalez Avarenga planned to kidnap a 14-year-old girl from Capitola, California by drugging.

Vasquez allegedly sexually assaulted a girl before the trio took the victim to a motel in San Jose illegally detained for ransom from her family. While the three criminals did not notice, the victim sneaked on the phone and sent emergency messages to friends via the Snapchat app. In the news, the female student said she was kidnapped and held illegally but did not know the specific location. The group of friends then used Snapchat (Snap Map) to locate the female student and call to notify the entire incident to the police.

Snap Map is a real-time location sharing feature that allows Snapchat users to send their location information to one or more individuals in the contact list extremely quickly, accurately, and this has been making a decisive contribution to the task of rescuing female victims.

Specifically, the Snap Map led the police to the EZ-8 hotel, where the girl was detained. The raid quickly took place, and the three villains had to lay their hands on cuffs eight. In court, they will face a range of crimes, including kidnapping extortion, illegal detention, rape and lewdness with minors.

Share on the incident, a Snapchat spokesperson said in an interview with BuzzFeed News that this is not the first time the Snap Map location sharing feature has been used for school support purposes. emergency.