Pizza shop employee helps save kidnapped child while on 'smoke break'

theGRIO REPORT - A young pizza shop employee in Texas used an alert she received on her phone to help authorities catch a kidnapper and save a young boy...

A young pizza shop employee in Texas used an alert she received on her phone to help authorities catch a kidnapper and save a young boy.

Courtney Best was on a smoke break from her job at Papa Murphy’s pizza in Corpus Christi, Texas when she checked an Amber alert on her cell phone. According to KRIS-TV, that alert helped her identify the kidnapper when he parked in the same shopping plaza.

“I stepped outside, I was standing by the trash can and I seen a white car pull up and I just happen to take my phone with me cause we don’t look at our phones at work, and I looked down and I saw ‘white Dodge Avenger amber alert’, and I was like, nah, that’s not him,” Best told KRIS-TV. “The man was walking across the parking lot looking at me … cause I was the only person out here, with the little boy and the little boy looked scared and I was like ‘no, that’s not him.'”

But she felt uneasy, so she checked the license plates. Sure enough, it was a match. When she realized that the car was, in fact, the right car, she knew she had to act.

“And I’m on the phone with 911 and I tell her, look, the plates match up, he’s turning left on Staples but I’m gonna follow him.”

The police came to their aid moments later, and the boy, 7-year old Nicholas Gomez, is now safe.

“That’s why I’m freakin’ out,” said Best. “Cause, what are the odds? What are the odds of me looking at my phone? And I usually don’t even look at amber alerts, as bad as that sounds, I look at them and I don’t really pay attention. And I was like, he couldn’t get from Alice in that little bit of time. Sure enough it was him.”

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