Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
CORVALLIS, Ore. (AP) -- Corvallis police are investigating a report of an attempted kidnapping that happened three days before Brooke Wilberger vanished.
The woman involved in the incident told police she walking home near the Oregon State University campus when two men in what she described as a black, "boxy looking" car tried to push her into the vehicle. The woman, whom police describe as Asian, was alone and told police she escaped by biting the driver's hand.
Diana Simpson, a Benton County undersheriff, said the woman did not initially report the incident to police. But she told her friends what happened, and they told the (Corvallis) Gazette-Times, which first reported it last week.
By then, Wilberger had been missing for several days.
Police said the May 21 incident didn't match any reports filed with local law enforcement or any of the hundreds of tips that had been called in on the phone line that was established for people to share information about the Wilberger case.
Police contacted the women who told the newspaper about the attempted kidnapping and asked them to share the name of the woman involved in the incident.
"They were able to get the friends to disclose the name to police," Simpson said.
The woman later reported the incident to Corvallis police and she was interviewed over the weekend. The case remains under investigation, and there is no additional suspect information, Simpson said.
Corvallis police Capt. Bob Deutsch said detectives are working with the woman to help her remember more details about her attackers. Police have not linked the incident with Wilberger's disappearance.
"If indeed there was some connection between the two cases, especially if the vehicle had some connection to one of our persons of interest, then we'd have some really hot leads," Deutsch said.
Wilberger, a Brigham Young University student, vanished May 24 from an apartment complex where her sister lives near Oregon State.
(Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
