Off-Duty Cop Credits Divine Intervention in Rescuing Kidnapped Woman

Do you believe in God?

Lt. Tommy Butler does and the Scotland County, N.C., deputy sheriff believes it was His divine intervention that helped him rescue a kidnapped woman trapped inside her abductors' car trunk.

Butler says he was off-duty when he "heard the Lord speaking to him," the Daily Mail reports. An unusual instinctual reaction aroused Butler when he saw a car run a stop sign, he says. Even though his shift had ended three hours earlier, he says he knew he had to pursue the car.

"I really just thought it was a going to be another stop, but then I starting getting a feeling that I needed to stop this car as quickly as possible," he said. "Something just said, 'Get this car stopped', and I reckon it was the Lord speaking to me," Butler recounts.

What ensued was a high-speed chase that reached 115mph.

When the car finally pulled off to the side of the road, the driver took off into the woods. But Butler's attention was drawn away from the fleeing suspect by frightened screams emanating from the vehicle's trunk.

"I would have ran him down," Butler told the Laurinburg Exchange. "But when you hear screaming coming from the trunk, that takes priority."

Butler was able to free the frightened woman who called him her "guardian angel."

The woman -- whose name has been kept private for safety reasons -- said she had stopped for gas when she was approached by a pregnant woman who asked for a ride. When she agreed, the woman's boyfriend also got into the car.

Butler said the couple ordered the woman to drive them to a different location, and once they got there, they robbed her of her cell phone and the $8 she had with her, claiming they had a gun. They then forced her into the trunk, Butler said. The man dropped the pregnant woman off at one location and continued on with their victim still locked in the car's back end.

Police later identified and arrested the couple. "We don't know for sure what their purpose was going to be. I'm just glad we were able to intervene," Laurinburg police Capt. Kim Monroe said.