The Sunnyvale Sun

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Sunnyvale man aids victim

By Cody Kraatz

While other drivers just passed by, Fred Burgener stopped to help a 17-year-old girl who was running, bloody and delirious, along N. Fair Oaks Avenue towards Highway 101.

"I made eye contact with her and I got out of the car. I asked her if someone was chasing her. At first I thought she had been in a fight or something," said Burgener, 41, a lifelong Sunnyvale resident and Union Pacific engineer, who was stopped at a stoplight as the girl was running against traffic.

"She insisted on getting in the car. Every time I hit traffic she insisted I go faster."

The teenager was beaten and abducted near her home in Palo Alto on Oct. 30, and was sexually assaulted before playing dead and escaping in Sunnyvale. Her alleged attacker, Todd David Burpee, 20, was arrested on Nov. 1 and remains in custody without bail on charges of attempted murder, sexual assault by force and kidnapping.

Rather than go to the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety headquarters, Burgener took the girl to his mother-in-law's house and called 911. His 11-year-old daughter brought ice and paper towels for the girl, who was barely coherent, he said.

"She was scared to death and also she couldn't speak English very well. She was oblivious. She didn't even know what was going on," he said.

Burgener didn't know what he had been involved in until he saw the news the next day.