This happened in Dadeville, Alabama which is a small town of about 3,200 people. Monday a passing motorist saw a young girl walking down a road by herself. The driver called 911 and police responded and began investigating. The girl said she had been held captive in her house for more than a week.

Court documents said the girl had been abducted on July 24 and tied to bed posts for about a week while she was assaulted and given alcohol to keep her in a drugged state.

The girl managed to get free and escape by chewing through her restraints, breaking her braces in the process, the documents said. Deputies who found her noticed she had marks on her wrists where she had been restrained…

The authorities said the girl who escaped had not been reported missing. Sheriff Abbett said she was in state custody and was “doing well.”

“She’s a hero,” he said. “She’s safe and we want to keep her that way.”

Police went to the girl’s address where they found two bodies which had been cut up. The bodies were later identified as that of her mother, Sandra Vaszquez Ceja and brother, both of whom had been murdered by the mother’s live-in boyfriend Jose Paulino Pascual-Reyes.

Charging documents against Pascual-Reyes state the little boy was fatally bludgeoned by the suspect, who used his hands and feet. The woman was smothered with a pillow.

Both victims were then “cut into small pieces at the joints in order to hide evidence,’’ according to depositions in the cases. Vazquez was killed in the course of Pascual-Reyes trying to hold her hostage.

The girl’s brother was not identified except to say that he was under the age of 14. Pascual-Reyes was not the father of either child and he apparently moved to Alabama with the family back in February. Police arrested Pascual-Reyes and he has been charged with multiple counts of murder. Ceja and her two children have been in the US since 2017 and she had a pending asylum claim. Pascual-Reyes was apparently here illegally.

According to an ICE spokesperson, ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations officers lodged an immigration detainer on Pascual-Reyes, following his arrest on Monday.

Pascual-Reyes was arrested by the U.S. Border Patrol on Dec. 14, 2014 and processed as an expedited removal and removed to Mexico on Dec. 23, 2014. He reentered the U.S. at an unknown location and time.

Here’s an NBC News report on the story and probably faces deportation if he doesn’t wind up on Alabama’s death row. If it turns out the child he killed was much younger than 14 (police haven’t revealed his exact age), Pascual-Reyes is going to have a very tough time in prison.