The Herald received a recent Spout Off asking why information about a possible attempted abduction of a girl at a school bus stop in Lower Township this spring was not made public.
“Why has an attempted abduction of a girl at a school bus stop on Shunpike Road earlier in the school year been completely swept under the radar? As a parent, I would like to know about these situations,” the spouter asked.
Donald Vanaman, deputy chief of the Lower Township Police Department, agrees that most parents would like to know this information, and authorities are very concerned with any report of an attempted abduction. However, he said the Police Department wants to make sure it knows what it is responding to before it sounds the general alarm. Vanaman said that, in this case, there was not enough evidence to determine that a crime had been committed.
“If we had a report of an attempted abduction that had just occurred, we would have notified the school, which would have initiated a reverse 911 call to the parents,” he said. “In this case, the incident was reported to the mother nine hours after it happened.”
Since the report came in so long after the incident, the Police Department interviewed the parent and the teenage daughter. According to the police report, the incident took place on April 17 at around 8:03 a.m., not “earlier in the school year.”
The girl said she was walking in the area of Socs Lane and Shunpike Road, looking down at her phone, when she heard a man ask her if she needed a ride. It was raining at the time, according to the police report.
Vanaman said the teen did not get a good look at the driver and could only describe the vehicle as a white pickup truck with a ladder in the back. He said he would not want to put out an alert on a vehicle before police knew a crime had been committed.
In this case, he said, they were lacking evidence. He said putting out a generic alarm with no evidence could create more problems, such as citizens attempting to stop similar vehicles.
According to the initial report, the driver was “acting strange”; however, that was not corroborated with any other statements describing what “acting strange” meant. The report said the driver asked the girl to get into the truck, but according to a follow-up interview, the girl said the man asked her if she needed a ride. Vanaman said there was no attempt to pull the girl into the truck or otherwise lure her into the vehicle.
“There was no offer of anything,” he said.
After the girl did not respond, the driver continued down Shunpike Road.
After receiving the report in the evening of April 17, the Police Department began covert surveillance of the area the next morning at around the same time. Vanaman said extensive property checks were made to try to identify a male driver of a white truck. Ultimately, he said, they located the vehicle and questioned its owner, who told them a friend was driving his truck that morning. They were able to interview the driver, but no charges were filed.
Vanaman said if the Lower Police Department receives a report of an abduction attempt, at the very least the department would dispatch a patrol car to investigate what happened. He said there have been reports of a possible missing child that turned out to be nothing more than a miscommunication between parents and/or the school; however, if there is a hint that there is something out of the ordinary going on, there is a series of actions that will be taken.
“Our missing persons policy is insanely robust,” he said. “We would put a BOLO (be on the lookout) out to all law enforcement first.”
Vanaman said the detective division would be put on the case and the Cape May County Prosecutor’s Office would be notified. He said his department would be checking Ring cameras and license plate readers for evidence that could be used to locate a missing child.
“This is not something we blow off,” he said.
Vanaman said part of the problem is that a piece of communication becomes miscommunication and then people get worried. He said some people have high-end scanners and hear a call about a missing child – a call that might not be substantiated – and they take it as being factual.
“In a lot of cases the caller can be worked up and want an immediate response, and the call comes out being way above what really happened,” he said.
Contact the author, Christopher South, at csouth@cmcherald.com or 609-886-8600, ext. 128.
