Brittney said she had been "looking at Bratz (dolls) and princess stuff" when she was picked up.

"I was kicking and screaming, and then he put his hand over my mouth, but I kept kicking," Brittney later told TV station CBS Atlanta.

"I kicked as hard as I can."

The brave schoolgirl credited her parents and teachers for stranger danger training, which she said had taught her how to fight off a stranger.

"I just never would think something like that would happen in a town like this," her mother Georgeann Baxter was quoted as saying.

Police have charged parolee Thomas Andrew Woods, 25, a parolee with a prior conviction for involuntary manslaughter reportedly dating back to his teens.

He told reporters he was innocent as police led him away in handcuffs.

"I didn't touch anybody," Woods told CBS. "I didn't bother nobody. I was never there."

Police Chief Keith Pesnell said Woods faced a charge of attempted kidnapping and was out on parole after being convicted of voluntary manslaughter in a suburban Atlanta county.