The Orange County Sheriff's Department (OCSD) has released the sketch at right of a man who tried to abduct an 11-year-old girl near a North Tustin middle school Tuesday afternoon.
The unidentified girl was walking her dog around 4:30 p.m. near Salt Air Drive and Simon Ranch Road, where a man in a white van tried to coax her inside, according to Lt. Jeff Hallock, the sheriff's spokesman.
The driver asked the girl if she needed help with the dog, and when she answered no he grew more insistent.
“Hey, get in the car,” Hallock reports him saying while adding the girl smartly ran home to safety instead.
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Witnesses said they have seen a van like that in the area, which is near Utt Middle School. It's possibly an early 2000 Chevrolet with a logos on both sides that have peeling “Quick Clean” lettering, recyclable water symbols and blue raindrops.
Tuesday's driver was described as Latino, about 30, with a shaved head and last seen wearing a blue windbreaker with a zipper and sunglasses.
Know who this chap is? Call the OCSD at 714.647.7000 or leave an anonymous tip with Orange County Crime Stoppers at 855.847.6227 (855-TIP-OCCS), via occrimestoppers.org or by texting to 274637 (C-R-I-M-E-S) from a cell phone. (All text messages should begin with the letters “OCCS”.)
Email: mc****@oc******.com. Twitter: @MatthewTCoker. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.