Three crimes, three minutes and three ways to better protect you and your family.
In a blink of an eye you or your child could become a victim.
Detectives say if a child is kidnapped the first three hours after the crime are crucial. After that the likelihood of finding the child alive decrease dramatically.
In the story you’re about to read it’s important to know we’ve reenacted these crimes.
No one is danger and all of the weapons are props.
In a Solving Problems investigation Fox 23’s Abbie Alford explains how you can protect your child from an abductor.
Crime #1-Kidnapping
Picture yourself in the park with your children and you’re sitting on the bench. You’re at the park because you don’t want anything dangerous to happen to your children.
You’ve brought your newspaper, a magazine, or your cell phone.
You glance down and it happens. It’s that one moment you take your eyes of your children they could be gone.
In a reenactment the mother Amber, is like many typical mothers whose life can change forever in less than a minute.
While Amber’s children are playing on the jungle gym, she’s keeping an eye on her children but an article in the newspaper catches her eye. She glances down and starts to read but her daughter, Kristin wonders off and here comes the bad guy.
Amber doesn’t hear anything but when she looks up from her newspaper and her daughter is gone.
The kidnapping happened in less than a minute.
Here’s what child crimes detectives say parents like Amber need to keep in mind to better protect their kids from an abductor.
"An abductor is going to sit here and he's going to look and pick out the parent that's not paying attention. He's going to pick out the parent where it's a chore to bring the child to the playground," says Sgt. John Adams. "He's your next door neighbor, he's the mailman, he's the guy you call Uncle Joe. The abductor is anyone around us. He doesn't look like an evil monster."
Detectives say grocery and department stores are also high target areas for kidnappings.
Talk with your children and have a plan in place. Teach them the wrong situation.
