Cell Phone Saves Kidnapped Girl’s Life

by Heather McLaughlin

I’m glad to hear there was a happy ending for 14 year old Elizabeth Shoaf, who was kidnapped and kept in captivity in a hand built, booby trapped bunker in South Carolina.

Entrance to the bunker Elizabeth Shoaf was held captive in.

Ms. Shoaf was able to send a text message to her mother from her suspected captor’s cell phone and investigators used cell phone towers to locate her general location. Once they had a general location, search parties found her standing in the entrance of the bunker which was located inside of a hill that was covered with plywood.

“We’re just glad that she’s alive and she’s safe and that she will be home with us,” her aunt, Geraldine Williams, told WLTX-TV in Columbia. “She’s a good girl. … We never believed that she ran away.”

The suspected kidnapper (and owner of the phone) , Vinson Filyaw, is 37 years old and is believed to have posed as a police officer when he met Elizabeth. There is a $5,000.00 reward for information leading to his arrest. He is considered to be armed and dangerous and has an unrelated charge of criminal sexual contact with a 12 year old girl.

I believe that cell phone technology made a difference between life and death for this young girl. Luckily Filyaw had the good sense to charge it before he lost it, too.

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