ATLANTA — Atlanta police say they've captured a man accused of attacking and kidnapping a woman as she was leaving a salon in Buckhead Monday.
Police said a witness told them Shaylia Thomas, who works in the salon on Bennett Street off Peachtree Road, was outside the salon when Eric Harris attacked her and threw her into the back of a car.
The witness told officers Harris then beat her up again before driving away in a 2007-2009 cream-colored Chrysler Aspen.
However, the woman involved told Channel 2's Dave Huddleston that's not what happened.
"It was just a big misunderstanding," Thomas said.
Thomas said she was arguing with her boyfriend and at one point he pushed her into the car. She said a man walking by saw the whole thing happen and followed them as they drove away.
"He pulled up on the side of us and he was like, 'Are you OK?' And then my boyfriend was like, 'Yeah, she's OK,' and then he just pulled off. So I guess the guy thought that I wasn't OK even after we told him so he called police," the woman said.
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Police across Atlanta began searching for the car involved in the alleged kidnapping.
At one point, Channel 2's Dave Huddleston saw the car they were searching for pull back into the salon parking lot, the driver made eye contact with Huddleston and then turned around and drove off again.
Huddleston alerted police, who took off after the man.
Shortly after, police say, they pulled the car over at a nearby Chick-fil-A and arrested the driver.
The woman says she was at a yogurt shop across the street when she noticed the police presence near the salon and workers at the shop told her a woman had been kidnapped. She turned on the news and realized that she was the alleged kidnapping victim.
Despite what she told officers, her boyfriend, Eric Harris, 19, was still arrested. Officers say Harris is a fugitive wanted in Florida for burglary and that a gun and drugs were found in his car.