OMAHA, NE (KETV/CNN) – A Nebraska man stands accused of sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl, and authorities say the victim’s mother walked in on the assault.
Gabriel Cardona, 29, was arrested Sunday night after a police manhunt, complete with a helicopter that circled the neighborhood.
Police say a mother walked in on Cardona sexually assaulting her 10-year-old daughter in her home. After that, neighbors say Cardona took off. They immediately began searching for him.
"We kind of helped the police out by checking around. A couple hours later, they had discovered that the man was hiding up the street in a house,” a neighbor said.
The girl’s mother says she knew Cardona. The police report shows the 10-year-old and the suspect share an address.
Neighbors say they hope Cardona is punished to the fullest extent.
"I feel like the man deserves a lot of punishment for that because that's a little girl, who’s scarred for life,” a neighbor said.
Joanna Halbur with the Child Saving Institute in Omaha says this situation is often difficult for both parents and children.
"Often, it's someone that the parents trusted, someone the child trusted. So, that trust has obviously really been broken, and that's really hard to make sense of and hard to kind of figure out what's going on,” Halbur said.
The institute works with children and their families to move forward and to heal.
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