Kidnapped 14-year-old chewed through duct tape to get free in Alaska, feds say
A 14-year-old girl was kidnapped, sexually assaulted, shot at and left in the woods by a convicted sex offender in Alaska, officials said, and she got free by chewing the duct tape binding her hands.
The girl “showed extraordinary bravery in escaping this horror,” U.S. Attorney Michael J. Heyman said in a July 2 news release announcing the sentencing of her accused attacker.
David Anderson, 52, from Wasilla, was ordered to serve 50 years in prison on federal charges related to the 2022 incident, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Alaska said in the news release.
The sentence, combined with an 85-year state sentence handed down in the case last year, means Anderson “will never be released back into our community to victimize another Alaskan child,” Alaska State Trooper Col. Maurice Hughes said in the release.
McClatchy News reached out to Anderson’s attorneys July 3 and was awaiting a response.
Anderson encountered the 14-year-old on Nov. 2, 2022, in Wasilla after she’d gotten off a school bus and was heading home, prosecutors said.
He’d been “struggling with pervasive thoughts about committing a rape,” he later admitted, according to a sentencing memo by prosecutors, and on that day, he grabbed a gun “and went out looking for a victim.”
He was already a sex offender, prosecutors said, “following another conviction in 2000 for sexually assaulting a minor.”
On the November day in 2022, he told the 14-year-old he was lost, then pointed his gun at her when she got in the car, the sentencing memo said.
He put a blanket over her head, duct taped her hands and “drove with her as his captive for what she later described was a long time,” according to the memo.
He eventually parked and led the girl down a trail with her head still covered, sexually assaulting her and stealing items from her backpack, including her phone and Nintendo Switch, the memo said.
He warned her not to move, “then stood over her, shielded his eyes so that he would not see what he was about to do, and fired multiple gunshots at her,” according to the memo.
Without checking if she’d been hit, “he left her in the woods and drove away,” the memo said.
The 14-year-old freed herself by chewing through the duct tape and walked to a road for help, according to the memo.
Anderson was soon arrested, the memo said.
He pleaded guilty in federal court in January to kidnapping a minor and committing an offense as a registered sex offender, prosecutors said.
Wasilla is about a 45-mile drive northeast from Anchorage.
This story was originally published July 3, 2025 at 3:13 PM with the headline "Kidnapped 14-year-old chewed through duct tape to get free in Alaska, feds say."
.JPG)