Driver tries to lure middle schooler waiting at bus stop, father says

DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — Dunwoody police are investigating claims that a man tried to lure a middle schooler into his car Tuesday morning as she waited at the bus stop.

The girl's father told Channel 2's Mike Petchenik that his daughter had been waiting for the bus on Woodsong Drive when a black Honda Accord pulled up next to her.

“The guy motioned to her to get into the car and she said 'no' and then sprinted back to the house,” said the father, who asked Petchenik to conceal his identity.

The father told Petchenik it’s unclear whether the man opened the window or said anything to the girl.

“He did a very clear motion to come over here,” he said. “It understandably shook her pretty good.”

Dunwoody police told Petchenik they are taking the report seriously, especially because it involves a child.

“In this case, she did the exact right thing,” said Sgt. Robert Parsons, of the Dunwoody Police Department. “She left the area. She did not go to the vehicle."

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Parsons said detectives were canvassing the Dunwoody Club Forest neighborhood for any surveillance video of the car.

“We’ve chosen to raise a family in Dunwoody because we feel like it’s a safe and family-friendly place, and incidents like this, parents like us, you’ve just got to be hypersensitive to everything,” said the father. “You can’t assume because you live in a certain part of town that these types of things can’t happen.”

The incident happened up the street from a recent case in which police said a man with a knife robbed a girl. Police told Petchenik the description of this suspect and his vehicle don’t match that case.

“I would hope that our experience has hopefully scared this guy off from coming back to our area, but that doesn’t mean he won’t try to do this somewhere else,” the father said. "My hope, certainly, would be that they find him and get him off the street so there’s one less creep out there.”

Cox Media Group