UPDATED at 2:10 p.m. Monday January 12, 2015: Police say the victim has been found and that she's fine. See details below.

Cops this week said they're looking for a kidnapped twentysomething woman who's been missing for about three weeks. Photos of the victim, below, were distributed last night.

The Los Angeles Police Department said over the weekend that the kidnapper “threw her to the ground and dragged” the unidentified woman out of a Highland Park business before putting her into a gray or silver SUV and driving off. She was never seen again.

It was a chilling crime for east-of-downtown areas that have seen at least two young women murdered in unsolved and possibly connected cases in recent years. To be clear, however, police did not tie this kidnapping to those crimes.

In fact, cops seem to think this victim is out there somewhere.

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The kidnapping was reported at 5:55 a.m. on Dec. 20 in the 5600 block of York Boulevard but, as the case remains unsolved and the woman has yet to be tracked down, cops want to figure this out.

According to reports the business involved was Christy's Doughnuts.

Credit: LAPD

Credit: LAPD

Police indicated the woman was dropped off outside the shop, went inside, ordered coffee, and then sat down to send what appeared to investigators to be text messages.

An LAPD statement says this is what happened next:

Approximately 46 seconds later, the same SUV that dropped her off earlier, pulled alongside her and abruptly stopped. The woman immediately ran back into the business. The driver of the SUV followed her into the business, threw her to the ground and dragged the victim outside. The suspect and victim argued for approximately two minutes then the suspect forced the victim into the passenger side of the SUV. 


Cops searched the area but couldn't find the SUV or the victim, police said.

The woman appeared to be in her 20s, 5 feet, 4 inches, 130 pounds with long brown hair and a tattoo of “what appears to be” a hibiscus flower on her left shoulder, according to the LAPD.

The suspected kidnapper is a man in his late 20s, close to 6-feet tall.

Anyone with information on the case was asked to call authorities at 877-527-3247.

UPDATED at 2:10 p.m. Monday January 12, 2015: After receiving tips, police this afternoon tracked down the victim via cellphone. She's safe and sound, they said. A detective told us the man was the woman's “on again off again” boyfriend and this was a “domestic violence type” of situation.

No further law enforcement action would be taken, he said, and the woman does not want the attention.

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