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Sturgis Abduction Case has Common Thread to '97 Kidnapping By Mark Peterson 7/19/05 |
Sturgis, MI — The latest
child abduction case in Sturgis has something in common with that city's most notorious crime.
While the two crimes are not believed to be related, the scene of both crimes is the same, the Village Manor Apartment Complex.
Village Manor was the home of 7-year-old Brittney Beers, who disappeared in 1997, and hasn't been seen since.
Last weekend, the complex was the scene of a sexual assault case that began with a sleeping ten-year-old boy
being snatched by an intruder.
There are a lot of people at the Village Manor Apartment Complex, who have children, and a basement window, which is a combination that suddenly makes them nervous.
“My daughter sleeps in my room now,” said Melissa Jones, who is a Village Manor resident. “She no longer sleeps in her own room. It’s really scary.”
On Saturday morning, an intruder came in through a basement window of one apartment, and snatched a sleeping ten-year-old boy, essentially, without waking up the boy, or three other people in the apartment.
“His first thought was ‘this is my father, taking me someplace’,” said Sturgis Police Chief Dave Northrup. “He had that sleeping fog and did not know until he was in the other apartment, the vacant apartment, before he realized ‘this is not my dad’.”
It was only when the boy woke up, that his nightmare began.
He was sexually assaulted in a vacant apartment, across the courtyard before being allowed to leave.
The boy did not
recognize his attacker, but he helped police put together a sketch and a description. It’s a man some around the complex had seen riding a bike and wearing a fanny pack. Despite the heat, he had on dark pants and shoes, and a black shirt with a red stripe.
“One of the luxuries we have of being a small town is that we do have people who see, and if I see you don't look familiar, you make a mental note of that,” said Northrup.
One mental note may alleviate the mental anguish of knowing, what happened a few buildings away, last weekend, could happen again. Source:
wndu.com |
