Philly cop makes good on promise: Abducted woman is rescued in Md.

AS THE excruciating minutes ticked by in the aftermath of her 22-year-old daughter's violent abduction Sunday from a dark street corner in Germantown, Keisha Gaither sat in her kitchen with Detective James Sloan, who made her a promise.

"He . . . told me, 'I'm bringing your daughter home. I'm bringing your daughter home,' " a tearful Gaither recalled last night. "I said, 'All right.' He said, 'No, I'm bringing your daughter home.' "

Yesterday - bolstered by a manhunt that spanned state lines and ultimately involved more than 100 law-enforcement officers working around the clock - Sloan, a 22-year Philadelphia Police veteran, made good on that promise.

"And he brought my baby home," Gaither said amid tears of joy during a news conference last night at which authorities announced that her daughter, Carlesha Freeland-Gaither, had been found safe in Jessup, Md., and her alleged captor, Delvin Barnes - described by police as a "vicious predator" - had been arrested. "He brought her right home."

FBI Special-Agent-in-Charge Edward Hanko, of the Philadelphia Field Office, said law-enforcement officers had tracked Barnes - a 37-year-old with an apparent penchant for violent crime, according to his court record - by identifying the dark-gray sedan he allegedly had used to snatch Carlesha about 9:30 p.m. Sunday from Coulter and Greene streets as she walked home from a family party.

A contingent of federal and local cops conducted surveillance on the car yesterday and waited until Barnes got out of the vehicle about 6 p.m., according to a police source - and pounced on him.

A shaken Carlesha was found inside the car, its back window still broken out from when she kicked through it in her valiant effort to escape her captor on Sunday. The vehicle was parked on a stretch of a busy Maryland road just off Route 1, about 115 miles south of Philadelphia.

The young woman, who works as a nursing assistant at Presbyterian Hospital, had some injuries but was in "good shape," Hanko said.

For the first time in three days, Keisha Gaither was able to hear her baby's voice again.

"She was very upset. She was crying. She just was asking for me," Gaither said of her first phone conversation with her daughter since her rescue. "Telling me she missed me, come get her."

Last night, Carlesha was in stable condition at Howard County General Hospital in Columbia, Md., waiting to be reunited with her mother and other relatives, whom police were preparing to escort there about 9 p.m. last night.

Police did not provide details on the horrors the young woman - whom relatives described as a fighter from the start - endured during the nearly 72-hour span she was with her captor, citing an intense and active investigation.

Barnes, Hanko said, was being held on a warrant last night for a separate crime. When authorities found him with Carlesha, Hanko said, he was wanted by the Charles City County, Va., Sheriff's Office on a warrant charging him with attempted capital murder, assault and malicious injury with acid, explosives or fire.

Police last night said they were continuing to delve into Barnes' past, but that they had not yet determined anything connecting him to his alleged victim. He once lived in Philadelphia, where he was found guilty in 2006 of aggravated assault, criminal trespass, false imprisonment, simple assault, reckless endangerment and related offenses in a violent domestic dispute with his ex-wife, court records show.

His criminal activity also includes several offenses in Virginia, including guilty pleas to a robbery in 2001 and a reckless-driving charge in 2000, according to court records.

Barnes will be federally charged with Carlesha's abduction, Hanko said.

Investigators had been hot on the alleged abductor's trail all week, as police released a number of surveillance videos and photos of a man now believed to be Barnes, first violently snatching Carlesha from the street in Germantown on Sunday night, and then using her ATM card at a bank in Maryland early the next morning.

Another big break came yesterday, when an eagle-eyed Maryland woman found a seemingly innocuous piece of trash in her yard, law-enforcement sources said.

An empty bag of Herr's Sour Cream and Onion Potato Chips, as well as the receipt from the Rhawnhurst supermarket where the snack was purchased, was found on the tipster's lawn in Havre De Grace, Md., sources said. The woman, having seen news reports about Freeland-Gaither's abduction, was suspicious that trash from a Philadelphia-area store was in her yard and contacted authorities.

Her tip led investigators to the Acme on Roosevelt Boulevard near Hoffnagle Street in Rhawnhurst, where they recovered surveillance footage of a man believed to be Barnes purchasing the chips.

"It was literally a food trail," Police Capt. Joe Fredericksdorf said after the news conference announcing Carlesha's rescue.

Authorities said that since the gut-wrenching surveillance footage of Carlesha's abduction and her brave struggle with the monster who took her made news around the country, citizens had been calling in dozens of tips.

"Let's not lose sight of the fact that literally hundreds of people were involved in this," said Lt. Robert Otto of the Northwest Detective Division, adding that his detectives, including Sloan, had worked tirelessly to find the young woman. "The public, too. My God, we were chasing the tips forever."

Yesterday, before Carlesha was found, as the hours wore on and the hope of her safe return started to fade, the FBI posted her face on 25 digital billboards across Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.

Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey praised the combined effort that brought Carlesha's story to its incredible resolution - but he cautioned that the young woman would need time to recover.

"We all need to celebrate, but also understand that this young woman has gone through a lot of trauma over the last few days, psychological trauma, and we need to respect her privacy, give her a chance to get herself together and heal, to reunite with her family."

Although Carlesha grew up in Maryland and attended high school there, the fact that her alleged abductor took her there may have been a coincidence. Police last night said they were still investigating Barnes as a perfect stranger to Carlesha who appeared out of the shadows on that dark Germantown street corner, stalked and snatched the young woman who did not know him.

As for what motivated Barnes to take the girl captive and drive her over state lines, police said they didn't - and might never - know.

"Other than the fact that he's a thug and this is what he does, apparently," Ramsey said.

"There's nothing that makes sense. Don't try to find it. He's a vicious predator. He's off the streets and, hopefully, he'll be in jail for the rest of his life. That's the only thing he deserves."