A man who strangled his partner in the back of a van near Nelson while her 5-year-old daughter sat in the front seat has been sentenced to at least 15 years in prison.

A man has been arrested who was wanted by police in connection with an alleged attempted abduction of a 13-year-old Timaru girl.

Investigators have released a photo of a man being sought over the attempted abduction of a 13-year-old girl who was dragged off her bicycle into bush near Timaru.

A description of the man accused of dragging a 13-year-old girl off her bicycle and into bushland near Timaru last night has been released.

Three teens accused of holding three young men at knifepoint and forcing them to drive around Wellington for hours are yet to enter a plea for kidnapping charges.

Three teenagers will appear in court in Lower Hutt today charged with kidnapping after a car-jacking which lasted about five hours on Saturday night.

A US woman who lived in numerous countries, including New Zealand, while on the run for 20 years for the alleged kidnapping of her daughter, has been arrested in Australia.

Three teenagers were allegedly held up at knife-point, assaulted and forced to drive around Wellington by a younger group of teens during a five-hour kidnapping ordeal overnight.

A Tauranga man has been sentenced to three years and four months in jail for kidnapping and bashing a man who had just accidentally killed his 18-year-old friend.

Two men have been charged with abduction after they allegedly tried to drag a 22-year-old woman into a van at 9.30pm in Dunedin on Saturday night.

In a radical shift in thinking, a man spotted carrying a young girl in his arms has now emerged as the key suspect for the abduction of Madeleine McCann.

A man who kidnapped a woman and held her captive in a Hamilton shed has been jailed for nearly three years.

Gunmen abducted six Red Cross workers and a Syrian Red Crescent volunteer after stopping their convoy in northwestern Syria, a spokesman said.

'Why didn't I cry out for help? Fear.' Ten years on and in a new book Elizabeth Smart details her ordeal after she was snatched from her bedroom by a crazed preacher.

A hitchhiker was forced to walk more than 4km into a forest where she was sexually assaulted and murdered, before her killer took his own life.

Phillip Layton Edwards has today pleaded not guilty to kidnapping a toddler.

A jury is deciding whether a Christchurch drilling boss who detained two thieves caught siphoning fuel did so legally and with reasonable force.

Christchurch jurors waiting for a trial to begin are rudely interrupted by a woman who burst into the jury room and locked herself in the toilet.

A woman who suffered horrific injuries after she was dragged behind a car at high speed has fallen out with her family.

A convicted thief caught red-handed siphoning diesel from a drilling company was bashed by up to 10 "unknown Polynesian males", kidnapped and dumped in a river, before the company boss handed him over to police, a court has been told.

A man wanted by police for child abduction has taken to Facebook to explain why he took the 2-year-old boy from his mother.

Over the noise of a heavy rain, a child's faint cries for help could he heard. Two-year-old Gabriel Witehira-Donnelly was cold and alone in a shed.

Family members of convicted killer Phillip Layton Edwards, who is on the run after allegedly abducting a 2-year-old boy in Auckland yesterday have been asked to phone police if they know where he is hiding out.

Police issue a blunt message to a convicted killer sought over a toddler's alleged kidnapping, as residents are urged to check their properties for signs of someone sleeping rough.

To her patients she was a grandmotherly figure, a kindly 56-year-old doctor who delivered hundreds of children.

A spellbound court watched as a woman who had spent 11 years in chains and had her unborn baby beaten to death inside her declared the beginning of her new life.