SOUTH FULTON COUNTY, Ga. — Police say a white van pulled up next to two children in Hapeville on Friday and the driver got out and chased them.
The Hapeville Police Department said two children -- a boy and a girl -- reported that a white cargo van pulled up beside them as they walked home from the bus stop on Moreland Way. The children told police the driver backed up toward them, got out and started to chase the girl.
The children told police the man stopped, got back in the van and left the area.
The children said they saw two men in the van and that the vehicle had a fence or cage behind the driver's seat.
“A lot of pain if you lose one of your kids. Too much,” Marco Antonio Mayo Olea said.
Mayo Olea said his daughter means the world to him. So, it hurt to hear she was at the center of a possible attempted kidnapping.
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“Breaks my heart just to hear it. Nothing happened to her, but when they told me, a lot of things came to my mind, and I don’t want that to happen,” Mayo Olea said.
“I heard them come running in the yard over here, screaming and hollering," neighbor Khadijah Adams said.
Adams said everyone knows each other and looks out for each other around the area.
“They’re like little brothers and sisters to me. They come over and play with my dog and everything all the time. So, it was really shocking to hear that,” Adams said.
Mayo Olea said his wife is now dropping off and picking their kids up at the bus stop. His advice to other parents: “Just everybody walk their kids to the bus stop, pick them up because you never know what’s going to happen.”
Police said the children described the driver as a black man who is about 5 feet, 8 inches tall and weighs about 175 pounds. He was wearing a baseball cap with sunglasses on top of the hat. They said the passenger was also a black man with "fuzzy hair as if he wore a ball cap all the time."
Police are searching for the van. They are asking anyone who spots it to call the Hapeville Police Department.
Cox Media Group
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