The fearless 11-year-old Bronx girl who thwarted a creep who tried to kidnap her this week described the harrowing experience in an interview with The Post, including the moment she shoved the sicko and got away.
The youngster, Fatima, bravely fended off her still-at-large attacker as she was walked home from school in Mott Haven around 6 p.m. while it was already dark.
“I felt very nervous and shocked. I was scared,” she said of the kidnapping attempt, which happened after she accidentally got separated from her older brother and was approached by a random stranger walking in the opposite direction.
“As soon as I passed him a little bit, he started asking questions,” Fatima said. “Where did I live, if I was 18.”
Fatima answered no and tried to walk away but the creep approached the pre-teen again — this time asking her for a hug.
“He was like, ‘can I have a hug?’ I was like, ‘no, no thank you,’” Fatima said.
He asked for another hug but things took a violent turn.
“I didn’t answer him the second time, so he grabbed me like hard,” she explained, aggressively gripping her wrist with her hand to show what the man did.
Fatima managed to free her hand and then “shoved him away and I started running,” she said.
The pre-teen’s mother, Fatoumata Jaiteh, explained that her brave daughter “was able to pinch him on the hand, get free and run back to her brother and then they went back to the school” where the dean called the police.
Jaiteh said the would-be abductor was “a total stranger.”
He was captured on surveillance footage but cops are still on the hunt for him.
Fatima’s mom said she was “panicked” when she found out because she experienced a similar kidnapping attempt when she was in high school.
“I know what it got me into, so I didn’t want my daughter to go through that and especially [on] her birthday,” she said.
Despite the frightening experience, Fatima was able to go home and celebrate with cake that night and courageously went to school the next day.
“She is one of those kids that don’t like to be absent from school. She was going [to] school, even though I told her to stay home with me for the day, she said no,” Jaiteh said.
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