Firefighter arrested in attack on girl

A volunteer firefighter has been arrested on kidnapping charges after police said he broke into a Bensalem, Bucks County, home Sunday night, locked an elderly couple in their bedroom and then choked the couple's juvenile granddaughter.

The attack ended only when the young victim recognized her old neighbor Shane Joseph McMichael, despite his black clothing and mask, and called out his name, police said.

The girl was able to persuade him to let her wash her face in the bathroom, during which he fled the home on Forrest Avenue near Bensalem Avenue in the township's Cornwells Heights section, police said.

McMichael, 21, a volunteer firefighter with the Cornwells Fire Company who lives on Kirby Drive near Patrician in the Far Northeast, now is charged with kidnapping, false imprisonment, assault, burglary, trespass and related offenses, Bensalem police said.

The girl told police that she was doing laundry just before 10 p.m. when she encountered the masked intruder in her family's kitchen. He immediately allegedly charged her, punched her repeatedly in the face, knocked her to the ground and began strangling her while bashing her head into the floor, according to an affidavit. When she called his name, the violence ended — but McMichael allegedly then insisted she come with him, investigators wrote in the affidavit.

The girl begged to first wash her face in the bathroom, investigators wrote. It was then, after hearing a noise upstairs, that McMichael allegedly fled, police said. She then ran upstairs to her grandparents' room and discovered they had been barricaded inside by a black rope that had been tied between the doorknob and a banister, police said.

After officers arrested him, McMichael confessed, saying "an impulse kicked in" when he left the Cornwells fire company at 9 p.m., and he drove to the victim's home, where he snuck in through an unlocked, first-floor window, according to the affidavit.

Investigators found a gold Jeep in McMichael's driveway; inside in plain view were a rifle, black clothes and black rope, police said.

McMichael now is behind bars at Bucks County prison on $2 million bail.