A 16-year-old wrestling champion from New Mexico has been hailed a hero for stopping the kidnapping of three young children by pinning a suspect to the ground until deputies arrived to arrest him.
The Dona Ana County Sheriff’s Office on Thursday thanked Canaan Bower, a junior at Mayfield High School, ‘for stepping up to save the lives of two children and potentially many others’ by detaining 22-year-old Daniel Arroyo Beltran.
Dona Ana County deputies arrested Beltran at around 9am on Wednesday after witnesses told authorities he tried to kidnap three children at a gas station in Las Cruces.
Hero: High school wrestling champion Canaan Bower, 16 (left), has been credited with saving a woman and her children in Las Cruces, New Mexico, by restraining accused kidnapper Daniel Beltran, 22 (right)
Police say Beltran followed a woman from a bus stop in Las Cruces and demanded that she hand over her children to him. The woman fled to a gas station convenience store (pictured)
Canaan, who was filling up his truck nearby, is seen rushing to the scene (dressed in a dark sweatshirt, jeans, and baseball hat) after hearing screaming
Canaan Bower entered the store and body-slammed Beltran (pictured)
The champion wrestler weighing 285lbs easily pinned the 155-pound assailant
Canaan kept Beltran restrained for five minutes until police arrived and arrested him
Beltran (pictured sprawled on the floor) was charged with battery, assault, child abuse and kidnapping
The mother told authorities that she got off a Greyhound bus at a station with her children, ages nine, two and one, and was waiting for an Uber driver to arrive when a man grabbed her two-year-old child and demanded the woman turn over her other kids.
Witnesses told authorities the man punched the woman and others who tried to intervene before the mother managed to run inside the Chucky’s convenience store on Thorpe Road with her children.
Witnesses said, the attacker, later identified as Beltran, followed the family, continuing his demands, reported Las Cruces Sun-News.
According to an account of the incident shared on Facebook by Kara Garrett Bower, her son Canaan was fueling up his pickup truck at a gas station across the street from the store when he heard screaming and rushed to the scene.
A store clerk was quoted as saying that prior to Canaan’s arrival, customers had attacked Beltran with fists, brooms and bottles, but he was able to fight them off.
‘With no regards for his own safety Canaan grabbed the man and threw him to the ground, where he kept him pinned until the police arrived about five minutes later,’ the heroic teen’s mother wrote. ‘There is a very good chance that Canaan saved many lives today and he definitely protected the kids from harm.’
Standing at 5 feet, 8 inches, and weighing 155lbs, Beltran was no match for the hulking 6-foot-2, 285-pound high school athlete who only recently had won the District 3-5A championship in the heavyweight division, and later competed at the state tournament.
Canaan’s father, Troy Bower, on Friday shared dramatic surveillance footage showing the confrontation.
It begins with a man believed to be Beltran following a terrified-looking woman clutching her three children into the convenience store.
Kara Garrett Bower, Canaan’s mother (left), wrote on Facebook that her son is ‘too nice to hurt people’ and that he made sure not to use excessive force against his much smaller opponent
Bystanders attempt to stop him, but Beltran proceeds to strike everyone in sight.
A couple of minutes later, Canaan, dressed in a dark sweatshirt and a baseball cap, comes running toward the commotion, exchanges a few words with a person holding the front door and enters.
Surveillance video from inside the business shows Beltran repeatedly punching a man before the towering high school wrestler arrives and body-slams the attacker.
Canaan then pins the man to the floor with his weight as he continues struggling.
‘Canaan is too nice to hurt people, any people,’ his mother wrote on Facebook. ‘Canaan clarified that the man was much smaller then him, he just grabbed him and took him to the floor like he does in wrestling and held him down until the cops got there.’
There is no indication in police reports that Beltran knew the mother or her children.
Beltran was charged with battery, assault, child abuse and kidnapping and remained jailed without bond as of Friday afternoon.
Online records indicate that Beltran was arrested in early March on charges of DUI and leaving the scene of an accident.
About a week earlier, he was picked up for another DUI, drug possession and resisting arrest with physical force.