DALLAS (1080 KRLD/NBCDFW) - After just 14 minutes, a Tarrant County jury convicted Michael Webb of on a federal charge of kidnapping an 8-year-old girl.
Webb was accused of kidnapped the girl in front of her mother from a Fort Worth neighborhood in May and later sexually assaulted the child.
Last week, the state announced Webb was facing several other charges including one count of aggravated kidnapping, six counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child (enhanced) and two counts of indecency with a child (habitual offender notice).
Prosecutors say Webb snatched the girl off the street in Fort Worth as she walked with her mother in the Ryan Place neighborhood on May 18. The girl's mother tried to prevent the abduction but was overpowered by Webb, police said.
“We're very happy with the verdict. We felt like the evidence against the defendant was overwhelming” said US Attorney Erin Nealy Cox. “This case had some pretty egregious facts. And we wanted to put them before the jury, and that's exactly what we did and the jury spoke to that.”
After an hourslong search, which included an Amber Alert being issued at about 11 p.m., the girl was rescued shortly after midnight at a hotel in Forest Hill. Webb was arrested at the scene.
Two weeks ago, Webb's attorneys said they wanted the case dismissed, arguing the search of his room, where police said he was found with the missing girl, was illegal because there was no probable cause to enter the room.
Forest Hill police visited Webb at his room earlier in the evening after a witness called police and said they saw him enter the hotel with a child. During their initial visit, Forest Hill police never spotted the child and left the room hours before she was eventually rescued by Fort Worth police.
The Forest Hill officer who searched the room but didn't uncover the girl was later fired.
On why Nealy Cox brought up the sexual assault, even though Webb was not being tried for sexual assault of a child: “One of the elements of the crime is that we had to prove that the defendant had a purpose for the kidnapping. And that was the purpose, unfortunately, for this kidnapping.”
Webb faces 20 years to life in prison on the federal charge.