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An unknown man attempted to carry a 10-year-old to his vehicle in Whitman Tuesday.
“I will tell you. It is ripping to say the least,” Capt. John Darby of the Special Victims Unit said of incident caught on business and residential surveillance video. “It is disturbing.”
A 10-year-old girl and her 2-year-old brother walked less than two blocks from their home to a corner store at Second and Porter street to purchase some water ice at about 3:50 p.m. Tuesday, police said at a press conference at police headquarters, 750 Race St., Wednesday. They headed home traveling east on the 100 block of Porter Street when a white sedan passed them and parked near Lee Street. The children headed north on the 2400 block of South Lee Street as the man exited his vehicle, walked up behind the siblings and picked up the girl with one hand while the other hand covered her mouth. She struggled, which caused the man to drop her. He tried to pick her up once more, but the boy started to scream.
“Ultimately, the scream from this little boy, by her account she says, ‘The child literally screams louder than anything I ever heard before,’ Darby said. “He literally interrupts this assault.”
The man fled back to his car, which headed eastbound toward Swanson Street, police said. The girl fled northbound on Lee, but retreated to retrieve her brother before heading home to inform her mother of the incident.
The man was described as Latino with a medium complexion, age 30 to 40, 5-foot-9 to 6 foot, thin; having a thin mustache, and short, black and curly hair; and wearing a black T-shirt and blue pants. His vehicle was described as a late-1990s to early-2000s, white, mid-size, foreign-model sedan, possibly a Mitsubishi or Nissan, with a scoff on the driver’s side rear bumper and a dent above the driver’s side front wheel.
“We ask folks to look around,” Darby said. “You probably know this guy.”
“I think the message here has to be very clear: Get this scum off our streets,” Mayor Michael Nutter added.
The City has posted a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the offender.
“Our children must be able to walk around their own neighborhood without lowlifes like this individual coming up, grabbing them, touching them or doing anything else,” he said. “It’s completely unacceptable. It’s totally outrageous.”
Even though police have not discovered a pattern of abductions in South Philly or elsewhere in the city, Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey reiterated the need to apprehend the perpetrator.
“This could have turned out to be very, very bad had he been successful at getting that girl and throwing her in the car,” he said. “If you pay close attention, he doesn’t close his car door when he gets out. He had every intention of bringing her back to that car, so we need to be able to find this guy very quickly.”
To report information, call 215-686-8477, text “PPDTIP" to 773847 or visit www.phillypolice.com/forms.
Contact Managing Editor Amanda L. Snyder at asnyder@southphillyreview.com or ext. 117.
Also in this week’s Police Report:
Blood splatters
Identity spree
Talkative robbers
Fighting back
Unsatisfied customer
Gun tease
Steal cycle
Underpass undertaker
Touch and go
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