POPLAR BLUFF, Mo. (AP) – A 45-year-old registered sex offender has been charged in the abduction of a 5-year-old southeast Missouri girl.

The Butler County prosecutor charged Jeffrey Dean Shelton of Poplar Bluff on Wednesday with four felonies, including child kidnapping and domestic assault.

The girl and Shelton were found during a traffic stop Wednesday afternoon along a highway about 10 miles south of the child’s hometown of Poplar Bluff.

The probable cause statement says a woman went to Shelton’s home early Wednesday and saw the child and that Shelton told the woman he was going to have to kill her and the girl.

The woman told authorities that Shelton bound her with duct tape and made the child expose herself. The woman escaped, and Shelton fled with the child.

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