Man arrested for allegedly abducting 7-year-old after school bus drop-off

A man is facing charges following the alleged kidnapping of a young girl shortly after she left her school bus.

The Sherburne County Sheriff's Office (SCSO) in Minnesota announced in a press release, that Joseph Andrew Bragg, 28, has been apprehended and charged with kidnapping the young girl.

According to the SCSO, Bragg allegedly took the child around 4pm local time on Wednesday (January 21), just after she disembarked from the school bus near her home in Zimmerman, Minnesota.

 The office reported that the girl was declared missing around 6:30pm when she failed to reach home.

“Despite an extensive search by law enforcement, first responders, and the community, we couldn’t determine her location, and it took hours before any evidence suggested she might have left the area in a car,” stated SCSO Commander Ben Zawacki in the release.

Authorities issued a community alert about the missing child — not publicly identified — just past 9:30pm, mentioning a “black passenger car that appeared to follow her school bus.” 

An Amber Alert was dispatched by the SCSO at 11:40pm, based on the belief, driven by gathered information, that the child had most likely been kidnapped.

Not long thereafter, detectives unearthed data and technological evidence pointing to a white Dodge Ram as the “suspect vehicle.”

Roughly half an hour later, Freeborn County informed the SCSO of locating the suspect vehicle with the 7-year-old girl inside. They confirmed she was “unharmed,” and Bragg was subsequently arrested.

The SCSO intends to investigate Bragg’s motive for heading to Zimmerman and targeting the child.