Talks Kidnap Suspect Into Giving Up, Turning Over Girl : Sugar Ray Goes to Mat for Child--and Wins

Police today credited boxing champion Sugar Ray Leonard with dramatically confronting a kidnap suspect and then helping locate a missing child.

District of Columbia police called Leonard at home Monday night and told him that a suspect in the kidnaping of 18-month-old Alecia Washington was refusing to talk to anyone but him.

“The guy had a T-shirt on that said Sugar Ray Leonard, and the officer was trying to calm the guy down and he said, ‘Well, Sugar Ray would want you to tell where the baby is,’ ” Leonard said today.

The child’s mother, Mary Battle, told police that she left the child on the sidewalk outside her apartment Monday afternoon while she went back inside to get her keys. When she returned a moment later, she said, the girl was missing.

Police said their investigation led them to believe that Tony Spaulding, 27, who shares the apartment with Battle, might have taken the child somewhere, but Spaulding refused to cooperate with authorities.

The investigation was at a standstill until Spaulding told officers that the only person he would talk to was Leonard.

Leonard was given a police escort from his home in nearby Potomac, Md., and arrived at the apartment just after 10 p.m. He spoke privately with Spaulding for several minutes, and then the pair emerged from the apartment, police said.

Police said Spaulding then led them to a wooded area in southeast Washington where the child was found tied to a tree but otherwise unharmed.