US man held in text-rescue kidnap

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US police have charged a man with the abduction of a schoolgirl who was freed from a forest bunker last week after she sent a text message to her mother.

Vinson Filyaw was arrested on Sunday along a highway in South Carolina.

He is accused of abducting the 14-year-old schoolgirl on 6 September by posing as a police officer.

The girl was rescued after police traced a text message she had sent to her mother, using her captor's phone, to a crude bunker hidden in woodland.

"This little lady getting that message out was really the break in the case," Kershaw County Sheriff Steve McCaskill told the Associated Press news agency.

"She helped herself as much as we helped her," he said.

The girl sent the text message to her mother while her captor was asleep, Mr McCaskill said.

Police began combing an area of woodland where the mobile phone message had originated.

The girl was found in a booby-trapped bunker, carved into the side of a hill and concealed with plywood.

The bunker had a hand-dug toilet, a camp stove and shelving made with branches and canvas.

Mr Filyaw has been charged with abduction, possession of an incendiary device and impersonation of a police officer, the Associated Press news agency reports.