Now the police are all over the elementary school, and apparently someone reported the white van today....maybe they have caught em. DD
Which elementary? Kiker? Where did you hear of the white van today? And btw, I spoke with the surveyors who are on South Bay, they dont' have any vans (and have already been asked about this).
Not to mention that there's actually 2 of them. "Loop" 360 does the same thing. Whoever designed the roads in the city should have been hanged.
My wife helps out at the school...and yes...Kiker.....KVUE is there right now interviewing Lori Schneider the principal. DD
Speed of Internet fueled white van scare Occupants turned out to be door-to-door salesmen. By Laura Heinauer AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Wednesday, December 06, 2006 In an example of how Internet rumors can take on a life of their own, suspicions and anxiety quickly filled the void of information after several Southwest Austin residents reported seeing a white van cruising their neighborhoods. When calls to police yielded no immediate information, one resident e-mailed a bulletin to several of his Circle C neighbors and local media outlets that said police hadn't responded to reports of an attempted abduction of a 13-year-old girl by several men in a white van with Georgia license plates. MOST POPULAR STORIES Women killed in Monday's traffic accident identified Parents sue Eanes school district, principal Hated billboards near Round Rock now raising safety concerns Four Hays High students accused of making bombs Texas sets 2007 opener against Arkansas State In response to a wave of concern from parents, three principals of area elementary schools put their campuses on lockdown, forbade students to walk home unescorted and sent letters home warning of possible danger. "There is safety in numbers," the principals of Clayton, Kiker and Mills elementary schools cautioned Thursday. The all's-clear came Sunday from school district police, who reported that several white vans full of door-to-door salesmen from Georgia combed Southwest Austin last week. They were selling magazines. "It was pretty creepy," said Dianna Duncan, a mother of three boys, including a kindergartner who attends Kiker. "Anytime you hear about something that affects your kids like that, you get worried." Duncan said she learned about the vans through the letter sent home from her son's school. Her husband, she said, immediately got on the Internet to try to learn more. Child abductions are rare. Of about 797,500 children abducted in a year in the U.S., according to a 2002 Justice Department report, 7.3 percent were taken by someone other than a family member and less than 1 percent, 115 children under 18, were victims of strangers or of people with whom the children were only slightly acquainted. "Unfortunately, parents are continually fed a diet of scare stories. When confronted with unusual circumstances, they can easily shift into panic mode," said Frank Furedi, a researcher on responses to fear and the author of the book "Paranoid Parenting." Austin school district police Lt. Eric Mendez said the sheer number of reports is part of what prompted principals from those three schools to call parents and have them pick their children up from school. The parents who reported the incidents, Mendez said, did the right thing by letting police know about activity that was out of the norm for the neighborhood. "I'm proud of the fact that these parents were being observant and cautious about their neighborhood," he said. "I think that anytime your neighbor takes care of you it's a good thing." Duncan said the level of neighborhood involvement doesn't surprise her. "It seems like everyone here in Circle C is so observant," she said. "I mean here, if your grass is too high, you'll have someone visiting you." statesman
I'm glad that the news was shared that quickly within the community. I still don't understand why they would bother a 13 year-old girl, or why they told two adults they found someone's pet bunny... but those are more than valid reasons for the community to raise warnings. Also, the article SUCKS. It makes it seem like we shouldn't have become alarmed because the odds are in our favor. Two quick thoughts on that one... obviously the journalist is not a parent (or not a good one)... and as parents we are WARNED and PREPARED about what to look for wrt threats to our children. These concerns were valid, whether they turned out right or wrong. And FWIW, in the one year study year they confirmed that 115 of the 58,200 missing and abducted by non-family members were by slight acquaintances or complete strangers and were assessed to be in EXTREME danger (40% chance of death) using these very specific criteria: starnger or slight acquantance, transported at least 50 miles, detained overnight, held for ransom or intent to keep the child permanatly or kill. As for the other 58,085 abducted by non-family members (again, can include slight acquaintances or complete strangers along with family friends), the OUTCOME could be just as bad but it did not meet the arbitrary criteria above. Here's where the journalist SUCKS: "Nealry half of all child victims of [both!] stereotypical kidnappings [the 115] and nonfamily abductions [the 58,200!] were sexually assualted by the perpetrator." http://www.missingkids.com/en_US/documents/nismart2_nonfamily.pdf , page 2 Cr*ppy journalists like this really piss me off. They ignorantly try to tell us parents that our concern is unfounded because 'ONLY' 115 children are adbucted and hurt by strangers each year, but the number is more like 58,000. Just a few magnitudes off.
Hard to be too cautious these days with your kids. Yes, I roamed for miles as a kid on a bike, usually with friends, but often alone, with the, "be sure to be back before dinner!" yell from Mom as I rode off, and never had a problem. That was decades ago, however, pre-seatbelts, even, and man, did we crawl around the Ford as it cruised down the road! Different days, and a different society. In a lot of ways, the older one of my day was better. I had freedom my own children could only dream about.
Deckard, As young kids, we used to roam a forest by our homes for many hours at a time. Hard to imagine that freedom now. I guess our parents were never aware of the threat, but (w/o research) I think it was there then also. I wrote a letter to the editor today and the journalist responded that she indirectly mentioned the 58,200 by mentioning the 7% abducted by nonfamily members. But she clearly misrepresented what the 115 abductions were. I think she misunderstood the study in a haste to support her point ('child adbuctions are rare'), and read that only the 115 kids were in danger, yet all 58,200 were. If you take the 58,200/yr abductions and 18 years of childhood, 1,000,000 instances of children abduction by nonfamily members will occur in this country during your child's childhood, of which half will include sexual assault. Doesn't sound rare to me.
Nope, and I think a lot of sexual assault of children goes unreported by the children because of embarrassment, fear... a host of reasons. Because they are kids. So it's probably even worse than that. We just live in a different world today. Not that my day was all Mrs. Cleaver World, because things happened then, as well, but not nearly to the extent they do today. Like I said, my own kids will never know the freedom I had growing up. They may be safer, but they've lost a lot. They may not know it, although I tell them stories of my childhood from time to time, but they have. So have we all. Heck, the country has added 150 million people since I was a kid. Maybe more. So much has changed.
