A gasoline station clerk who came to a suburban Detroit girl’s defense when she entered his store and mouthed the word “help” ultimately had a hand in saving the teenager after a stranger had kidnapped her at gunpoint on her way to school, according to authorities.

“I believe this could have [gone] a lot worse than it did,” said police chief Hussein Farhat of Hamtramck, Michigan, at a news conference addressing a rescue partially attributed to convenience store employee Abdulrahman Abohatem. “We have every belief that this could have ended really badly.”

As first reported by the Michigan news outlet WXYZ, the 16-year-old girl at the center of the case was waiting for a school bus in Hamtramck to take her to classes at Frontier International Academy on the morning of 13 April when a gun-wielding man whom she did not know kidnapped her.

The man, who had evidently targeted the girl at random, eventually brought her to a Sunoco gasoline station in nearby Detroit where Abohatem was working as a clerk. Abohatem later told WXYZ that he became suspicious of the situation when the man asked the girl to pay for cigarettes.

“Then, she mouthed … to me, like with no sound: ‘Help,’” Abohatem recounted to the outlet. He described getting out from behind the front counter’s protective glass, placing himself between the man and the girl and ordering him to leave the business.

Some of the girl’s fellow students who had witnessed the abduction had managed to track the location of the victim’s cellphone. They provided that information to police, and officers arrived at the Sunoco as Abohatem was escorting the man, whom he realized was an alleged kidnapper, out of his store.

Upon seeing the police, Abohatem instinctively pointed to the man he was kicking out of the store and told officers, “That’s the guy,” he recalled to WXYZ.

Officers quickly arrested the man, whom the Hamtramck police identified as Donald Fields, a 48-year-old registered sex offender. Without elaborating, police said prosecutors charged Fields with criminal sexual conduct, kidnapping, illicit possession of a gun, felonious assault and of being a habitual offender.

Police said a judge ordered Fields held without bond.

The girl, meanwhile, was subsequently reunited with her family at her home.

A statement from Frontier said the school was grateful its victimized student had been “safely recovered” and noted the suspect’s swift arrest, though it expressed understanding for how “situations like this can be concerning for families and the broader community”.

Farhat at a news conference on Thursday said it was “heroic” how the victim had received vital aid from her fellow students and Abohatem.

Hamtramck mayor Adam Alharbi added: “This rescue was a testament to the vigilance of our community.” Alharbi furthermore said that he wanted “to personally commend the victim herself for her incredible courage in seeking help”.

As for Abohatem, the Arab American News wrote that his fellow Yemeni American community members in and around Detroit had rallied support for him while he reportedly prepared for his upcoming wedding.

Abohatem himself told WXYZ it felt “good [to] save somebody”.

He also remarked: “Sixteen years – she is [a] child.”