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SARATOGA SPRINGS — Police in Saratoga Springs on Tuesday provided extra patrols in the neighborhood where an 8-year-old boy reported an attempted abduction.
“He came in the door and he said, ‘I almost got kidnapped. I just almost got kidnapped,’” said Jocelyn Hansen, the boy’s mother.
Hansen said her son was walking home from a piano lesson Monday afternoon in their Fox Hollow neighborhood when a white vehicle approached with three adults all sitting on the front bench seat.
“The man slowed and stopped the car and said, ‘Get in,’” she said. “My son shook his head no.”
“They didn’t get out of the car but they forcefully told him to get in,” she added.
The third grader told his mom that the car drove away, turned around and started to approach him again. That’s when a 15-year-old boy came from across the street and asked him what was wrong.
“This car drove by again and the older boy was also able to see the three people in the front,” Hansen said. “This car continued down another street and slowed for a girl on a bike and when some more children joined this girl in the street, the car sped up and went past them.”
Hansen’s son described the occupants of the vehicle as a man with white hair seated next to two similar looking older women with short, brown curly hair.
“We don’t have an exact description or confirmation on the vehicle,” said David Johnson, the spokesperson for the city of Saratoga Springs. “We know that it’s a white vehicle that was either a crossover or minivan.”
Saratoga Springs police detectives are going through video footage from doorbell cameras in the neighborhood in hopes of getting a better idea of what the suspects were driving, Johnson said.
Hansen says it’s been an emotional 24 hours and hopes the security cameras provide investigators with more information.
“He told me that he has a terrible fear of going outside,” she said of her son. “My anger is at people who think they have the right to come into someone’s neighborhood to stalk children, to take advantage of someone who is smaller and weaker than them. That makes me really angry.”
