A surveillance camera video captured the terrifying moment a hulk of a man ambushed a New York City teen in an attempt to abduct her. However, her fearless but tiny mom wasn’t letting anyone get away with taking her baby — no matter how big they were — and she boldly sprang into action. Thankfully, there were angels on her side.
Adriana Alvarez will never forget the morning her 18-year-old daughter, Lex, was returning to their fourth-floor apartment, following a morning walk with their two dogs, only to be ambushed by a masked man. As he violently dragged Lex down the stairs, a doorbell camera captured the terrifying ordeal as well as the moment the brave mom sprang into action in hopes of saving her daughter.
As seen in the shocking video footage, Lex had just returned to their Astoria apartment building just after 9 am when she was suddenly ambushed from behind by 25-year-old George Vassiliou, a former coworker turned alleged stalker who had reportedly become obsessed with the teen. After lying in wait, Vassiliou abruptly emerged from a staircase behind the teen before quickly grabbing the girl, which prompted her to let out a horrified scream.
After grabbing Lex by her shoulders, Vassiliou forced her down the steps and out of frame, but Adriana Alvarez had heard her daughter’s desperate and terrified cries for help. Without hesitation, the courageous mother flew into action, bolting into the hallway and down the stairs, chasing after Vassiliou and her daughter. “I’ve never heard my daughter scream like that,” the 35-year-old mom told the NY Post. “I thought maybe the dog had run downstairs, but I step out to see my daughter being dragged away.”
After catching up with the perp, Adriana relentlessly began punching the alleged kidnapper as a life-or-death struggle over her daughter ensued. The “fierce 5-foot-4, 130-pound mom exchanged blows with the hulking and armed 6-foot-2, 230-pound Vassiliou” as the battle for Lex continued over four flights of stairs. Unsurprisingly, Adriana’s punches had little effect on Vassiliou, whose imposing frame dwarfed the mom’s petite build, but Adriana had angels on her side.
As the fight descended down the stairs toward the building’s entrance, Vassiliou pummeled Adriana in the face before pulling out pepper spray and using it on the mom and daughter. However, Adriana was undeterred. Even when she was unable to see clearly, Adriana struggled against Vassiliou as she called out for help. Thankfully, her desperate cries were also heard and answered. “We reached the first floor, and a neighbor who’d heard us screaming came out with a stick,” Adriana recalled.
As the brave neighbor entered the fray, hitting Vassiliou with the stick, Adriana noticed his open apartment door and pushed her daughter inside. Unfortunately, things were far from over. Vassiliou blocked the door from closing with one of his feet as he grabbed for the girl once again. “I tried pushing his foot out,” Adriana recalled, but Vassiliou grabbed her by the hair and pulled her into the building’s vestibule before allegedly stomping on her back several times.
Eventually, by some miracle, the mother and daughter broke free, allowing them to sprint outside, where Adriana started banging on her neighbor’s windows, begging someone to call 911. That’s when another angel came to their rescue in the form of next-door neighbor Gus Bougas, who ran outside, knocked Vassiliou to the ground, and held him down until police arrived. “I knocked him on the floor,” Bougas told NBC News. “And, once I go on top of him, he couldn’t go nowhere.”
What the police discovered when they arrived was enough to give any mother chills. Vassiliou had parked a rental car outside Alvarez’s building. Inside, police recovered a bag containing rope, sleeping pills, melatonin, and tampons. A knife was also discovered in one of his pockets. “He had this all planned out,” Adriana Alvarez said, asking rhetorically, “Where was he going to take my baby?” Thankfully, because the tough mom was intent on stopping the abduction, that question remains unknown.
George Vassiliou was charged with attempted kidnapping, assault, weapon possession, unlawful possession of noxious matter, harassment, and violating an order of protection. According to jail records, he was taken to Riker’s Island with bail set at $50,000. Meanwhile, the brave mother didn’t come out of the ordeal unscathed.
Instead, Adriana Alvarez was seriously injured while saving her daughter and had to be taken to the hospital. There, it was determined that she had suffered a dislocated shoulder, a fractured orbital socket, and a broken elbow during the nightmarish incident, in addition to an obvious black eye. A GoFundMe was started to help cover the heroic mom’s medical bills and missed work.
Sadly, it should have never come to this because George Vassiliou was a known threat to the teen. In fact, Lex already had a restraining order against her alleged attempted kidnapper. It all began when Lex worked with Vassiliou at a supermarket, where she was a cashier and he worked in the deli department. Although they had befriended one another, things became “weird” when Lex noticed Vassiliou often staring at her.
Eventually, Vassiliou asked Lex on a date, but unfortunately, that’s when things went from bad to worse. “She said, ‘No,’ and he quit his job and started stalking her,” Adriana recalled. “We had a restraining order against him because he’d tried twice to grab her off the street — before this happened,” she added. According to reports, police sources confirmed the previous two incidents.
“You never imagine this kind of thing would happen to you, especially in your own building. It was horrible,” Adriana Alvarez admitted. In the wake of the attack, she and her daughter created a flier, warning other women to “run” if they cross paths with George Vassiliou, whom they described as both violent and a kidnapper. “It was the only thing I could do,” Adriana said. “You are not going to run us out of Astoria. We are not going to be scared. We’ll show the world your face and tell them what you did.”
While others in the area need to be alerted to what this monster is capable of doing, the world needs to know what this mother did. She’s the one worthy of attention here for her bravery. Thanks to her efforts, her daughter walked away without a scratch. “No one was taking my baby,” she declared, and she made good on that promise. As the saying goes, the most dangerous place in the world is between a mother and her child, and it’s good to know there are still courageous mothers out there who prove this to be true.
