A man accused of kidnapping a 12-year-old West Haven girl and letting her go was charged Monday with child kidnapping.
The charges are the most severe brought against multiple felon Damon Victor Crist for an attempted abduction that its victim told a national television audience on Monday she quickly thwarted by hitting him and calling him names.
Meanwhile, court records indicate Crist, who was awaiting a hearing on an arrest warrant out of California, was released from the Davis County Jail on July 7 with two local theft cases pending against him.
Charges filed Monday say that on July 26, Crist, 22, of Centerville, approached two children on bikes who had stopped on 4400 South on their way home from piano lessons. Crist allegedly told them he was looking for his lost dog and was handing the girl a phone number to call in case they found the dog when he grabbed her and tried to force her into the open passenger side of his pickup truck.
The girl kicked the door shut, so he carried her to the driver's side and put her in the back seat, charges say. She tried to get out, but the back doors were locked, so she began hitting her captor and yelling.
"I started yelling just things you hear, like I was calling him, like, 'loser,' 'jerk,' just not really bad things, but just things that I'm not really supposed to say," she said on NBC-TV's "Today Show."
Crist made it as far as the end of the street and stopped and let the girl go, the charges say.
"It was totally unexpected and unplanned for that it scared him off," said Weber County sheriff's spokesman Capt. Klint Anderson.
"I wasn't going to take a chance, so I just got out," the girl told the "Today Show."
Meanwhile, she said, the girl's 8-year-old brother had run to a neighbor's home to call 911.
John Walsh, host of "America's Most Wanted," was also a guest on the show and said the girl did everything right.
"I believe she saved her own life by fighting back," Walsh said.
Police recovered a matching fingerprint from the piece of paper Crist gave the girl, according to the charges.
For his part, Crist told police after he was arrested early Friday morning in Centerville that he had talked to the children and that the girl had sat in his truck to write down a phone number, according to court documents.
He told investigators the girl couldn't find her pencil, so he got frustrated and told her to get in the truck and shut the door. Then he drove away, the charges say.
Child kidnapping is a first-degree felony, which could land Crist from 5 years to life in prison and a fine of $10,000.
If Crist is sentenced to prison, it will be new territory for him, but confinement won't be. Court records say he has seen the inside of the Weber and Davis county jails each year since 2001, when he turned 18.
A 2001 case out of Bountiful ended with Crist pleading guilty to one count each of forgery and burglary. He was sentenced to a year in jail with credit for time served.
Crist pleaded guilty to theft, a second-degree felony, regard- ing a case in Roy in 2002 and was sentenced to jail with work release, again with credit for time served, and was put on three years probation in January 2003.
But during 2002, Crist managed to go to California, where he was arrested for theft of a motor vehicle, burglary, receiving stolen property and giving false identification to a police officer.
He pleaded no contest to the first charge, and the others were dismissed, according to California court records.
A $25,000 bench warrant was issued in April for his arrest out of California, and Crist was scheduled to have an extradition hearing July 29.
He was found guilty of theft in a Woods Cross case in 2003 and pleaded guilty to burglary in 2004 in Weber County. In April, he pleaded not guilty to theft by receiving stolen property and criminal mischief in a North Salt Lake case. And in June he pleaded not guilty to theft in a Layton case.
He was released from the Davis County Jail on his own recognizance July 7.
Anderson said it can be frustrating when officers put people in jail and they get released. But it's up to attorneys and judges how long offenders stay in jail, he said.
E-mail: jdougherty@desnews.com