MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A Southwind High School student said she was able to fight off a stranger who chased her home from school and grabbed her.
“I just was thinking ‘Why is he trying to talk to me?’ He sees that I’m really young. I just got out of school. I have a backpack on and everything,” Stephanie Jordan, 16, said.
Stephanie was home safe with her family when we spoke with her on Friday.
“I’m trying not cry, because it could’ve went the other way,” said her father, Steve Jordan.
Stephanie told WREG about the approximately 35- to 40-year-old man in a gray car.
He called out to her Thursday while she was walking home from Southwind High.
She said he asked for her name, but she ignored him and kept on going.
“After I started speeding, I heard a car door slam, so I ran. I started running to the house,” Stephanie said.
She said the man was right behind her.
He caught up with her after she dropped her key on her doorstep.
“When I dropped the key, I picked it up and put it in, and by the time I did that, he was trying to grab me,” she said.
Stephanie was able to open the door but not before the man got hold of her shirt.
She fell and kicked the door, slamming it on his arm.
Then, she locked herself inside.
“She ran, she fought him, she got here. She didn’t let him take her nowhere else, and she did what she supposed to do,” Jordan said.
The Jordans called police and the high school.
They wanted to warn families before this happens to anyone else.
“I hope they catch you as soon as possible. You’re just a jerk,” Steve said, referring to the suspect.
The Jordans told WREG they are now seeing to it that there is always someone around to get their daughter home safely.
Stephanie said she usually walks home with friends, but she walked home alone Thursday.
WREG saw several law enforcement cars patrolling in their neighborhood Friday afternoon.
The description of the suspect is somewhat vague.
Stephanie believed him to be about 5’7″.