Men Reportedly Abduct Girl

MISSION VIEJO — Two men were seen early Wednesday grabbing a young girl from the sidewalk outside a school playground, triggering an intense manhunt even as investigators were puzzled that no one reported a child missing.

A group of gardeners working outside the Marguerite Christian School told authorities that a girl age 8 to 10--dressed in pink with a school backpack slung over her arm--was forced into a Cadillac by the men, who sped off as the child screamed.

But as of late Wednesday, no parent had come forward to report a missing child, authorities said. The girl was too old to be a student at the parochial preschool, and a hasty head count at local schools throughout Mission Viejo turned up no missing students.

“We’ve gone door-to-door and to all the schools, and there’s nothing,” said Lt. Ron Wilkerson, spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. “We’ve had no calls and there’s nothing, absolutely nothing. . . . We’re in a holding pattern.”

The extra layer of mystery complicated the investigation and sparked a flurry of calls from worried parents to area schools.

“Most of the parents I spoke to today were extremely frantic,” said JoAnn Moothart, director of All Bright Pre-School near the abduction site. “We’re always in harm’s way, it seems, living in this society.”

Another local parent, Joy Livingston, said the report delivered an immediate chill to the neighborhood. “It jolts you back to reality,” the mother of two said. “This is a real family-oriented neighborhood. And today everyone has got their kids inside.”

The girl, described as having blond hair reaching to the middle of her back, was grabbed between 8 and 8:20 a.m. on the sloping El Retiro, just north of Felipe Road, Wilkerson said.

The driver of a Cadillac jumped out and pushed the girl into the passenger side of the car, witnesses said. A second man in the back seat helped by pulling on the youngster’s shirt, witnesses said.

The abrupt attack on the perimeter of the preschool’s honeysuckle-lined playground was witnessed by a group of gardeners, Wilkerson said. One of the landscapers, Jose Rodriguez, said he was mowing the grass when he saw the abduction.

“I told them to ‘Stop! Stop!’ She was screaming for help,” Rodriguez said. “I tried to run for help but it was too late.”

At first, Rodriguez’s fellow workers thought the landscaper was screaming because he had found a rattlesnake. They said that by the time they ran toward the car, it was speeding off.

The vehicle went west on Felipe Road and then north on Marguerite Parkway, Wilkerson said. A teacher, alerted by the yelling, ran inside to call 911, Wilkerson said.

The car was described as a newer model, champagne-colored Cadillac with a white roof, tinted windows and chrome spikes on the hub caps. A frame around the license plate mentioned Long Beach, and the second and third characters in the license plate were believed to be “BL,” witnesses said.

Both abductors were described as African American men. The driver was in his 40s, about 6 feet tall with a mustache and goatee, and wore a blue shirt, witnesses told police.

A search for the car turned up nothing Wednesday afternoon, and sheriff’s investigators were also stymied in their effort to identify the victim, whose description did not appear to match any missing persons report.

Attendance checks at the closest public schools turned up no missing students, and by early afternoon both the Capistrano Unified and Saddleback Valley Unified school districts reported that all of their students were in class or absent but accounted for.

A dozen local private schools contacted Wednesday also reported no missing students.

Cheryl Marty, a spokeswoman for the Capistrano Unified School District, cautioned parents not to succumb to panic--especially with the lack of information on the victim.

“We take this very seriously, but we want people to know that we’re wary of heightening emotions in folks,” Marty said. “We want to make sure we’re doing our job and that students are safe, but we need to remember that this is an alleged abduction.”

While some raised questions about whether the landscapers did indeed witness an abduction, Wilkerson said authorities had no reason to doubt the account.

He also said investigators are considering the possibility that the youngster is visiting from out-of-town.

“She could have been visiting someone in the area temporarily,” he said. “We’re working on that.”

Investigators said they would begin backtracking through excused absences at local schools in an attempt to screen for the girl’s identity. A parent or person posing as a parent may have called in the absence if the child was taken in a custody dispute or some other family crisis, Wilkerson said.

The prospect that the incident might be a random crime was clearly the most upsetting scenario for neighborhood residents in the usually serene community.

“Part of the problem in living in a place like Mission Viejo is that we sometimes live under a false sense of security,” Moothart, the preschool director, said. “But it can happen here just as easily as it can happen in New York.”

The Mission Viejo report came on the heels of an attempted abduction Tuesday outside a Costa Mesa coin wash and a month after a man allegedly tried to lure two Santa Ana children into his car in separate incidents.

While crime statistics suggest that most children in the United States are safer than previous generations, each incident ratchets up parent anxiety, authorities say.

Also contributing to this report was Times staff writer Geoff Boucher.