CCP 08-26-2002 - Laserfiche WebLink

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. sheriff. The deputies shot at him numerous times while he sat in the car and struck him twice in the head, Sparks said. The girls, Tamara Brooks, 16, and Jacqueline Marris, 17, were in the back of the vehicle but the deputies couldn't see them before they started shooting, Sparks said. Television footage showed the sobbing girls being bandaged before they were taken to a Bakersfield hospital. Hospital administrator Peter Bryan said they were released late Thursday and were returning home with their families. The sheriff said the girls were raped. The kidnapper was identified as 37-year-old Roy Ratliff, who had a long criminal history and was charged in October with raping a relative but was never apprehended. The girls were abducted at 1 a.m. in the Quartz Hill area outside Lancaster by a gunman who left the girls' dates bound with duct tape. Ratliff drove off in a Ford Bronco that belonged to Brooks' date, leaving behind a car the FBI said was stolen in Las Vegas last month. There were a number of sightings of the Bronco, Including calls from an animal control officer, state highway workers and a gas station. The car was spotted by a sheriffs helicopter near Walker Pass, Kern County sheriffs Cmdr. Chris Davis said. . Friends and relatives at the sheriffs command center in Lancaster wept with joy and hugged when they learned the girls were safe. After the kidnapping was reported, authorities swiftly issued an "Amber Alert," which uses the government's Emergency Alert System to notify TV and radio stations, which then can interrupt programming if they choose and broadcast alerts. AMBER Alerts, which stands for America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response, provide descriptions of the child and the suspected abductor. It was the first time California used the plan named for Amber Hagerman, a 9-year-old who was kidnapped in 1996 and found dead in Texas. There are 17 states, including Minnesota, that have Amber Alert plans. Brooks and Marris were kidnapped after they parked in separate vehicles on Quartz Hill, a teenage hangout. The gunman forced Brooks out of the Bronco belonging to her date, Eric Brown, 18. He then approached a pickup truck occupied by Marris and her date, Frank Melero Jr. Brown said he was blindfolded, bound with duct tape and tied to a post. "He just kept telling (Brooks] to stay down, keep her head down, don't look at him," he said. "He told me he was going to kill me but he didn't want to," Brown said. -- Newhouse News Service contributed to this report. .