Kidnaping Suspect Arrested

A Lake View Terrace man suspected of kidnaping his ex-girlfriend’s 3-year-old daughter after repeatedly ramming the woman’s car was arrested Sunday as he made a call from a pay phone outside the Antelope Valley sheriff’s station, authorities said.

Willie Chisom, 22, was taken into custody at 5:50 p.m. after a deputy recognized him from a sheriff’s radio broadcast, officials said.

“I looked outside and saw a male black with a black girl and said, ‘Hey, that looks familiar,’ ” said Deputy Marty Shearer, who was working at the station’s front desk when he saw the pair. “It was real heavy-duty police work.”

Shearer said Chisom had just picked up the receiver when he and another deputy went outside and arrested the man without incident. The girl, Lasheia Taft of Lancaster, was returned unharmed to her mother, Latonia Taft, 22, deputies said.

Deputies said Chisom drove his car alongside Taft’s car as she drove on the Antelope Valley Freeway near Canyon Country about 11:10 a.m. Sunday and rammed it several times in an attempt to force it off the highway. Taft took the Sierra Highway exit, parked at a gas station with the doors locked and asked an attendant to call police, Deputy George Ducoulombier said.

Chisom broke the car’s front passenger window, took the girl out and told the mother that if she ever wanted to see her daughter again, she would have to talk to him, Ducoulombier said. Chisom left with the girl in his car, he said.

The man had been in telephone contact with deputies at the sheriff’s Santa Clarita station, who tried to persuade him to release the girl and give himself up, Shearer said. But Chisom repeatedly hung up and did not agree to turn himself in, Shearer said.

Shearer said he did not know if Chisom went to the Antelope Valley sheriff’s station to surrender.