A fearless Queens mother sprang into action when an alleged stalker tried kidnapping her teen daughter from their Astoria apartment building, according to police and shocking video footage.
A doorbell camera captured the courageous moment Adriana Alvarez sprinted after the deli worker — who’d allegedly become obsessed with her 18-year-old daughter, Lex — as he violently dragged her down the stairs.
Dramatic video shows how the nightmare unfolded just after 9 a.m. on Jan. 23, when Lex is seen returning to their fourth-floor apartment on 43rd Street following a morning walk with their two dogs. Suddenly, a masked man in a camouflage jacket — later identified by cops as George Vassiliou, 25 — emerges from a staircase, where he’d been lying in wait.
Vassiliou, wearing black gloves, grabs Lex by both shoulders, and begins dragging the girl down the stairs and out of frame. Alvarez is then seen bolting out into the hallway, and down the stairs.
“I’ve never heard my daughter scream like that,” Alvarez, 35, told The Post. “I thought maybe the dog had run downstairs, but I step out to see my daughter being dragged away.
“You never imagine this kind of thing would happen to you, especially in your own building. It was horrible.”
A life-or-death struggle continued over four flights of stairs, as the fierce 5-foot-4, 130-pound mom exchanged blows with the hulking and armed 6-foot-2, 230-pound Vassiliou.
Her punches had little effect as he continued pulling Lex down the stairs, toward the building’s entrance. She said Vassiliou pummeled her in the face before pulling out pepper spray and using it on both women.
Alvarez — who suffered a dislocated shoulder, a fractured orbital socket and a broken elbow during the savage battle — was undeterred. Though unable to see clearly, she kept struggling with Vassiliou and calling out for help.
“We reached the first floor, and a neighbor who’d heard us screaming came out with a stick and started hitting” him, she said. “I saw that the [apartment] door was open, and I pushed my daughter inside.”
Vassiliou blocked the door from closing with one of his feet, and again started grabbing for the girl.
“I tried pushing his foot out, and he grabbed me by the hair, and pulled me into [the building’s] vestibule,” Alvarez recalled. He then allegedly stomped on Alvarez’s back several times.
Eventually, the mother and daughter managed to break away from Vassiliou, and sprinted outside. Once on the street, Alvarez started banging on her neighbor’s windows, yelling for someone to call 911. “A guy who lives next door ran outside to hold him down until the police arrived,” Alvarez said.
Vassiliou was charged with attempted kidnapping, assault, weapon possession, unlawful possession of noxious matter, harassment, and violating an order of protection, police said. He is being held on Riker’s Island with bail set at $50,000, according to jail records.
NYPD sources said Vassiliou rented a car the night before the attempted kidnapping and parked it outside Alvarez’s building. Inside the car, cops recovered a bag containing rope, sleeping pills, melatonin, and tampons. A knife was also discovered in one of his pockets, sources said.
“He had this all planned out,” said Alvarez. “Where was he going to take my baby?”
According to Alvarez, her daughter worked with Vassiliou at the C-Town Supermarket on 34th Avenue in Astoria.
Lex, a cashier, had befriended Vassiliou, who worked in the deli department.
“They were cordial, they spoke, they were friendly,” she explained. “But he got a little weird — where she would be bagging stuff, and he’d be staring at her.” Eventually, Vassiliou approached Lex about going on a date.
“She said ‘No,’ and he quit his job and started stalking her,” Alvarez, an aesthetician, alleged. “We had a restraining order against him, because he’d tried twice to grab her off the street — before this happened.”
Police sources confirmed the previous two incidents.
Even with the arrest, the single mom isn’t taking any chances. She created a flier with her daughter, warning area women to “run” if they ever come across Vassiliou, who they described as a “violent . . . kidnapper.”
“It was the only thing I could do,” Alvarez said. “You are not going to run us out of Astoria. We are not going to be scared. We’ll show the world your face and tell them what you did.”
Her daughter walked away without a scratch, but Alvarez faces mounting medical expenses for her serious injuries. Alvarez’s uncle started a GoFundMe campaign for the hero mom.
“No one was taking my baby,” she declared.
