WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW)-Benjamin Brady, 34, arrested and charged with kidnapping and theft, said he was glad the girl in the back seat of the car he stole is safe.
On November 20, 2022, just before 7:00 p.m., a 2006 Lexus RX was stolen from a north Wichita liquor store that had a 6-year-old girl in the back seat.
According to court documents released on Jan. 22, 2023, the girl was left in the car as her father drove into a liquor store.
“He stated that he left it unlocked and ran into the parking lot because [the girl] slept in the back and wanted it to be warm,” the state court documents.
After leaving the liquor store, the father realized his car and daughter were gone.
A man who worked at the liquor store examined the video footage and found that the suspect, Brady, had bought a beer and left. After he got out, he then stole the car.
FLOCK cameras showed Brady in the stolen car heading south to Oklahoma.
The Kansas Highway Patrol (KHP), Kansas Turnpike Authority (KTA), and Oklahoma Highway Patrol (OHP) have all assisted the Wichita Police Department (WPD).
Soon after Brady arrived in Oklahoma, around 8:00 PM, OHP stopped the car and arrested him without incident.
The girl was found safely in the back seat and reunited with her family.
After Brady was read his Miranda Rights, he told an OHP soldier that he was “happy with this [the girl] was safe” and that he stole the car because he was homeless and cold. He said the reason he was driving in Oklahoma was that “the homeless were nicer there.”
Brady also claims he didn’t realize the girl was in the car until he hit the road and looked in the backseat. He says he was “figuring out what to do” as he continued to Oklahoma.
According to court documents, the girl remembers parts of the incident. She said she remembers her father not being in the car and then seeing an unfamiliar man enter. She recalls that she was scared “because she wasn’t her father” and that she “should have gone home, but the unknown man drove in the wrong direction”.
The girl also claims that he never touched her and never asked her to touch him.
