BRIDGETON, Mo. — Police in Bridgeton, Mo., are searching for a man, they say, tried to abduct a nine-year-old girl near a school bus stop Wednesday morning.
The girl told police a man in a white van pulled over while she was walking and asked her if she would help him look his cell phone inside the van. When she continued walking, she told police the man got out of his van and grabbed her arm.
The girl was about to get away and the man drove off.
The report came the same day 12-year-old Adriaunna Horton’s body was found after being abducted from a park in Golden City, Mo., on Monday afternoon.
When the mother of the nine-year-old Bridegton, Mo., girl heard the news about what happened to her daughter, she felt sick.
“I was at work when I got the call, and I almost threw up on my desk,” her mother said. “I was very scared.”
The suspect is described as a white man in his 40s, standing between 5’9″ and 6′ with brown hair and possibly brown eyes. He had a tattoo on the upper side of his right forearm and was wearing a camouflaged shirt or jacket with black pants and a black baseball hat.
Police are reminding parents to review stranger danger rules with their now that a new school year has started.
Bridgeton is a suburb of St. Louis.