Trash collectors spot suspect’s car after 10-year-old is abducted, Louisiana cops say

Tanasia Kenney

A missing 10-year-old girl is back home safe thanks to a pair of attentive city sanitation workers, Louisiana authorities say.

The two men were on their trash route early Monday when they spotted a gray car “ducked off” in a wooded field in St. Martin Parish, about 50 miles west of Baton Rouge, according to a video posted online. Inside the car was Jalisa Lassalle, 10, who authorities said had been kidnapped the night before.

“I thank God,” trash collector Dion Merrick says in the clip as officers lead the accused abductor, 33-year-old Michael Sereal, away in handcuffs. “He blessed us to find that little girl.”

Jalisa was reported missing from New Iberia on Sunday, and an Amber Alert was issued later that evening, KATC reported. It was Merrick and fellow city worker Brandon Antoine who spotted the sedan described in the alert as they worked their morning shift, New Iberia police said in statement announcing that the 10-year-old had been found safe.

Both men are employees with Pelican Waste & Debris, the sanitation company confirmed in a Facebook post.

In a Facebook livestream, Merrick recalled what was going through his mind. He remembered hearing about the Amber Alert for the missing girl.

“Something told me. I said, ‘what’s that car doing way ducked off in the field like that?’ Guess what. That’s the dude with the little girl,” he says in the video.

At one point in the video, an officer thanks Merrick and Antoine for their help and asks them to stick around for further questioning.

Sereal was arrested at the scene and booked into jail on a charge of aggravated kidnapping, according to police. He’s a registered sex offender and was convicted of carnal knowledge of a juvenile in 2006, the Acadiana Advocate reported, citing an Iberia Parish registry.

Merrick said he “was just doing my job,” but he is thankful for being in the right place at the right time.

“People act like they see stuff by they don’t want to say nothing. But she’s safe now,” Merrick says in the video. “Thank God man, because I got a little girl. I’m on my job doing what I got to do.”

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