Virginia Beach, Va. - A 14-year-old girl says she sprung into action after a total stranger assaulted her friend at a Beach bus stop.
To say Marlainus Haugen is a loyal friend may be an understatement.
"I was pretty upset," she says. "I was basically like this guy has a death wish and he messed with the wrong person."
Thursday around 8:30 a.m., Marlainus was walking to her bus stop. Her 13-year old friend was already waiting at the corner in their Ocean Lakes neighborhood in Virginia Beach when a man approached, then inappropriately touched the girl.
"I see him run off and she was on the ground crying," Marlainus says.
After coming across the street to make sure her friend was alright, Marlainus took off and sprinted after the man.
"He was running pretty fast,” she says. “He was running like he knew he was in trouble. I turned the corner and I was looking around for him and either he went in the house or he hopped a fence."
The man was gone, nowhere to be found. Marleinus rushed back to her friend.
"We had gotten on the bus and I asked her where he hit her and she said that he was trying to touch her below the waist and that's when I called her parents,” she says.
The girl's parents called police and the two teens spent most of their school day talking to investigators.
When Holli Haugen found out what her daughter did, it made her a bit nervous, but she wasn't surprised.
"Marly just has always been that way,” Holli Haugen sayas. “If she wasn't my kid, I’d want her for my best friend she's just really, really loyal."
"She’s like my little sister. It didn't matter if he was a man, a little kid,” Marlainus says. “I wanted them to at least come back and say that they're sorry or something."
Marlainus says the man looks about 20 years old, is 6 feet tall, 150 pounds and has shaggy brown hair.
If you have any information, call police.
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Girl reports being touched inappropriately at Beach school bus stop
