A Texas man with a lengthy criminal history has been arrested after he allegedly tried to kidnap a 13-year-old girl over the weekend.
Stanley Dotson, 41, has been charged with attempted kidnapping for the May 3 incident at the Bella Vida apartment complex in Harris County outside of Houston.
Dotson has been arrested at least 26 times, starting when he was just 13, court records revealed.
The teenage girl told Harris County sheriff’s deputies that she was riding her electric scooter in the neighborhood with her 9-year-old friend around 8 p.m. last Saturday when a man began following her.
She guessed he was about 30 to 50 years old and recalled him wearing a gray shirt with the word “SHOT” on it. The teen told deputies that he had been staring at her and that it was making her uncomfortable.
He then grabbed her by the arm and pulled her to the ground. She got up and started screaming, at which point the man let her go and she ran off.
The girl’s father, Pedro Basulto, said the suspect quickly caught up with her as she fled and pulled her to the ground a second time. She only got away from him when a neighbor stepped outside to smoke a cigarette, causing Dotson to run off, Basulto said.
Basulto said that by the time he got outside, the man was already gone.
“Thank God, I don’t know why destiny didn’t want me to find him because bad things would have happened,” Basulto told ABC13 in Spanish.
At the same apartment complex, a woman had recorded video of a man who deputies later identified as Dotson. She told ABC13 that he had been touching himself outside her window and fiddling with his pants shortly before he allegedly grabbed the teenager.
On Tuesday after the terrifying incident, managers at the apartment complex shared a photo of the man in an email to tenants.
The next day, deputies said they had received an anonymous tip identifying Dotson as the man in the photo.
A victim and witness in the case were shown a photo lineup of Dotson and several other men with similar characteristics and both were able to positively identify him as the suspect, police reported.
Dotson was arrested on Thursday at his apartment on Airtex, less than a mile from the Bella Vida Apartments. He was booked into the Harris County Jail and charged with attempted kidnapping.
The Harris County District Attorney’s Office filed a motion seeking to deny bail for Dotson, citing two prior felony convictions.
At his hearing on Thursday, his bond was set at $100,000.
