Third abduction try reported in Dist. 300

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Updated: March 3, 2012 11:37AM

CARPENTERSVILLE — Community Unit School District 300 alerted families, staff and community members Wednesday to the third reported attempted child abduction within the district in the past month.

An elementary school student was approached by a stranger in a vehicle Tuesday afternoon in the Algonquin Lakes subdivision in Algonquin, according to an email sent to district residents the next day.

That email, from District 300 Safety Officer Gary Chester, was “simply to remind you to please reinforce with your child the dangers of street encounters and stranger interaction,” it said.

The 10-year-old boy was walking home from a friend’s house in the subdivision at about 3:43 p.m. Tuesday, according to the Algonquin Police Department. That’s when a man described as Hispanic and in his early 30s reportedly asked the boy to get into his vehicle, a white, cargo-style E series Ford van, police said.

The community and schools in the area are on a heightened level of security, and Algonquin police have increased patrols throughout the area, according to police. Police are investigating the incident, the second involving a District 300 student within the village in the past few weeks.

Previously, two Hispanic men in a similar white van reportedly approached a 13-year-old girl walking to her bus stop at about 9:30 a.m. Jan. 17 on Teton Parkway, just north of Glacier Parkway. The men had asked the girl, a student at Algonquin Middle School, to get into the vehicle and became “more verbally forceful” when she refused, District 300 said at the time.

And on Jan. 3, two Hispanic men in a white van had approached a boy at his bus stop in Carpentersville’s Silverstone subdivision. The boy also was an Algonquin Middle School student. That followed a nearly identical incident just over a year before at the same bus stop.

In his email Wednesday, Chester suggested parents discuss safety precautions with their children.

Students should not talk to strangers who try to talk to them on the way home from school and should run home or to the nearest public place and tell an adult if the stranger continues to talk or stops his or her vehicle. They should never walk up to the car of — or go with — a stranger, and it is better if they do not walk alone, he said.

If someone does approach them like in the previous incidents, students should call 911 immediately if they have cellphones and try to remember as much as they can about the stranger and vehicle, he said.

Algonquin police also stressed that similar incidents should be reported without delay.