A teen girl is being lauded as a hero after she heard screams coming from the trunk of a car parked on a suburban street in New Jersey — and helped lead cops to discover a bound, kidnapped man locked away for hours inside.

Kayla Rose, 17, of Irvington was out walking her dog, a bichon-poodle mix named Milkshake, before school Thursday at around 7 a.m. when she heard “knocking and scratching” coming from the trunk of a black Nissan parked on her block.

“I moved closer and said, ‘Hello?’” Rose recalled, adding that’s when she heard a man reply back, ‘Hello? I need some help!’ ”

Rose said she “got scared” and “nervous,” so “I got help quick.”

“I went to my neighbor across the street and they called the police,” Rose said, noting, “Nothing like this happens over here.”

Rose also told her mom, Marie Banks, what she discovered.

“She said it looked like she was in a horror movie,” Banks said.

The neighbor who called the cops, Joe Bollaro, 70, tried to get the trapped man out of the car using a crow bar to no avail.

“All I was doing was bending the metal,” Bollaro said.

“I asked if he could breathe,” said Bollaro. “He said he could. I told him to ‘hang on, the police and fire department are on the way.”

When authorities arrived at the scene on Lindsley Avenue, firefighters managed to jimmy open the car door, fold down the back car seat and pull out the man who was bound with tape.

“His face was all smashed up,” Bollaro said. “He said they hit him. They had him tied up, his hands. The firemen had to cut him loose.”

According to the Union County Prosecutor’s Office, the man inside the trunk was reportedly carjacked, kidnapped and robbed.

The man, whose identity was not released, was carjacked at around 7:30 p.m. on Avy Street in Hillside by two armed thugs.

The suspects allegedly took the victim to local banks in the area where they ordered him to withdraw sums of cash, authorities said.

When the victim was found Thursday morning he was suffering from non-life-threatening injuries, officials.

“He was scratched up on his forehead,” Rose said, adding that the man, who she described as between 18 and 20, was wearing a gray hoodie and sweatpants.

Rose, a junior at Irvington High School, headed to school after the bizarre discovery.

Her mom and Bollaro called the teen a “hero.”

“I told her, ‘you saved a life today. You are a hero!’ ” said Banks. “How many times you hear people found dead in a trunk?”

Bollaro said Rose is “the hero.”

“She found him,” he said.

The Union County Crime Stoppers are offering up a reward of up to $10,000 for information leading to an arrest and indictment in the case.