Kidnapped Girls Speak Out

Aug. 5 -- High school girls Jacqueline Marris and Tamara Brooks joined forces against their captor after a violent abduction brought them together

" ________ "Marris, 17, said.

Brooks, 16, said

After the girls were kidnapped from a popular teen hangout spot near Lancaster at about 1 a.m. Thursday, they tried to kill their abductor by stabbing him with a bowie knife and smashing him in the head with a whiskey bottle.

Marris said that after they got their kidnapper, Roy Ratliff, out of the stolen truck, they locked themselves inside and watched as he rolled around on the ground bleeding from the neck and head.

Ratliff, an ex-con, eventually managed to get up and pointed a gun at the window of the vehicle, telling them that he would open fire if they did not open the door within three seconds. The terrified girls eventually complied.

Their ordeal wouldn't end until hours later, when Ratliff died in a shootout with Kern County sheriff's deputies who caught up with him on a remote canyon road between Ridgecrest and Lake Isabella Thursday afternoon.

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An animal control officer first spotted Ratliff and the Bronco, Waldie said. The officer contacted the Kern County Sheriff's Department, and the California Highway Patrol came upon Ratliff at Walker Pass in Kern County. A short pursuit ensued, but Ratliff crashed the Bronco and then fled the vehicle, leaving the girls.

Kern County officials said police pursued Ratliff on foot after the crash. When he resisted and refused to surrender, deputies shot him.

Ratliff, who was armed with knives and guns, abducted the girls from separate vehicles, where they were parked with their male companions.

After restraining the girls' boyfriends at gun-point with duct-tape, Ratcliff road off with both girls in a Ford Brono truck that belonged to one of the boyfriends.

Police used five helicopters and three planes to search the canyons and desert around the kidnap scene. Other police departments in the region were notified to be on the lookout, and police used for the first time a new "Amber Alert" system designed to spread the word when a child is abducted.