Video Shows Mom Fighting Off Daughter's Alleged Kidnapper Down Stairs

Doorbell camera footage shows a brave Queens mother fighting off her teenage daughter's alleged kidnapper down four flights of stairs.

The footage, which was obtained by the New York Post on Sunday (March 24), shows Adriana Alvarez, 35, sprinting after the suspect who grabbed her daughter, Lex, 18, and violently dragged her down the stairs during an incident at their Astoria apartment complex on January 23. The man, identified as deli worker George Vassiliou, 25, attacked Lex while she was returning from a morning walk with her two dogs at 9:00 a.m.

Vassiliou, who was wearing a mask, black gloves and a camouflage jacket, emerged from his waiting position at a staircase and grabbed Lex by her shoulders, dragging her down the stairs and out of the video before her mother heard her screaming and bolted into the frame to track him down.

“I’ve never heard my daughter scream like that,” Alvarez told the Post. “I thought maybe the dog had run downstairs, but I step out to see my daughter being dragged away.

“You never imagine this kind of thing would happen to you, especially in your own building. It was horrible.”

Alvarez, who is 5-foot-4, 130 pounds, said Vassiliou, who is 6-foot-2, 230 pounds, pummeled her in the face before pulling out pepper spray and using it on both women. The mother said she suffered a dislocated shoulder, fractured orbital socket and broken elbow during the struggle with Vassiliou.

“We reached the first floor, and a neighbor who’d heard us screaming came out with a stick and started hitting” him, she told the Post. “I saw that the [apartment] door was open, and I pushed my daughter inside.”

Vassiliou attempted to block the door from closing with his foot and tried to regrab Lex before pulling her mother's hair, dragging her into the vestibule and stomping her back several times. The mother and daughter eventually managed to break away from Vassiliou and sprint back inside their apartment, at which point Alvarez banged on her neighbor's window and yelled for someone to call 911 before a neighbor ran outside, grabbed Vassiliou and held him down until officers arrived at the scene.

Vassiliou was charged with attempted kidnapping, assault, weapon possession, unlawful possession of noxious matter, harassment, and violating an order of protection, according to the New York Police Department, and is currently being held at Riker's Island on a $50,000 bond, according to jail records obtained by the Post. Police said Vassiliou rented a car the night before the incident and parked outside Alvarez's building.

The car contained a bag holding rope, sleeping pills, melatonin and tampons, while a knife was discovered in one of his pockets. Vassiliou is reported to have previously befriended Lex, a cashier, when the two worked together at the C-Town Supermarket in Astoria.

“They were cordial, they spoke, they were friendly,” Alvarez told the Post. “But he got a little weird — where she would be bagging stuff, and he’d be staring at her.”

Vassiliou reportedly asked Lex out on a date and was rejected, at which point he quit his job and began stalking her, according to Alvarez.

“We had a restraining order against him, because he’d tried twice to grab her off the street — before this happened," Alvarez said with police sources confirming the two prior incidents.

A GoFundMe account launched by Alvarez's uncle, Oscar, to help pay her hospital bills exceeded its initial goal of $5,000 by raising more than $25,000 from 476 donations as of Sunday afternoon.