He Was Her 'Friend.' Then He Kidnapped Her and Threw Her Off a Bridge — and Now He Learns Fate By Christina Coulter

A Massachusetts man who was supposed to be a family friend instead kidnapped a 7-year-old girl, strangled her and threw her off a bridge into a lake. She survived the plunge — and now, years later, he’s been convicted.

On Thursday, jurors found Joshua Hubert guilty of two counts of attempted murder — one by strangulation and one by drowning — along with strangulation/suffocation and kidnapping a child under 16, according to WCVB, Boston.com and the Boston Globe.

The girl — now 15 — testified that she had fallen asleep at a family cookout when Hubert lifted her from a chair and carried her to his car, according to Boston.com, the Boston Globe and MassLive.

Prosecutors alleged that Hubert then climbed into the backseat and sexually assaulted her — charges the jury later rejected, per the outlets. They said he next put a bag over her head, tightened it with rope and forced her into the trunk of his car before driving nearly an hour to the I-290 bridge and throwing her — still dressed in pajamas and wrapped in her blanket — into Lake Quinsigamond.

The body of water reaches depths of about 90 feet, according to the City of Worcester.

“I was thinking that he wanted me dead. If I breathed really lightly and quietly, he would think that I was dead and everything would stop,” the girl told jurors, per MassLive. “So that’s what I did.”

She also testified that when she hit the water she felt “slightly relieved … because he couldn’t hurt me anymore,” Masslive reported.

Despite the weight of her wet clothing, the girl swam about 100 yards to shore and knocked on the door of a nearby home for help, according to WCVB, Boston.com and the Boston Globe.

The jury acquitted Hubert on both rape charges, which included aggravated rape of a child and rape of a child aggravated by age, those outlets report.

PEOPLE previously reported that the child did not disclose rape allegations until 2022, saying she had not understood what rape was when she was 7 years old.

During the trial, lawyers discussed how sperm cells were discovered on the girl’s underwear from the night of the attack — but they did not match Hubert. Instead, Hubert’s lawyer argued, the DNA matched her father, according to MassLive, Boston.com and The Gardner News.

After the verdict, Hubert’s attorney told Boston.com: “I feel like I’m living in To Kill a Mockingbird. I don’t know how rational jurors could look at the evidence and say that Joshua Hubert was guilty in this case.”

A sentencing date has yet to be set, per WCVB and the Globe.