Abduction attempt rattles Lakewood

LAKEWOOD RANCH — It was any parent’s worst nightmare.

Summerfield Crest resident Jennifer Venditti had just arrived home with her 7-year-old daughter Feb. 18 from violin practice. As Venditti gathered their belongings, her daughter crossed the street to visit with a friend.

Just then, an unmarked white van crept up the street. Venditti watched in horror as a man got out of the van and called out to the girls. She sprinted toward them and ushered them back inside the home.

“I don’t know what drew my attention to it,” Venditti said of the van. “He was driving too slow. It was an unmarked vehicle.”

Just minutes after the incident in front of Venditti’s home, the man again exited his vehicle in front of a home across the street and waved money at another young boy, who was playing in his driveway with his bicycle.

“The guy actually walked up into my yard,” father Robert Speir said. “I can’t think of any logical reason someone would come up (and offer a kid money). It was a shocker when I heard that.”

The man did not ask Speir’s 8-year-old son to get into the vehicle but instead got back into his car and drove a few houses down after the child fled inside. He continued driving and waved and honked at two older boys, who simply moved out of the way, Venditti said.

“He made it seem like he was supposed to be there, and we all knew him,” Venditti said of the driver.

A Manatee County Sheriff’s Office report, which places the incident at 5:21 p.m., states the driver of the vehicle stopped in the roadway several times to talk with children. The vehicle was not located in a subsequent search of the area.

Venditti described the driver as a black male in his late 30s or early 40s. He was wearing a blue button-up shirt. She also saw a white female — possibly in her teens or early 20s — in the back seat of the van.

Another neighborhood mother reported seeing the van patrolling the neighborhood since at least 1 p.m., that day, Venditti said.

A log from the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office recorded a suspicious vehicle was seen in the 6200 block of Braden Run about 30 minutes before the incident, but Public Information Officer Dave Bristow of the sheriff’s office said the call was about an abandoned vehicle and was unrelated to the Summerfield Crest incident.

Venditti’s husband, Gene, said the incident in his neighborhood should put residents and parents throughout the area on watch.

“It doesn’t matter where you live, you have to be on your guard,” he said. “Just because this is supposed to be a nice community doesn’t mean bad things (can’t) happen here.”

Anyone with information, should contact the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office at 747-3011 or Crime Stoppers at (866) 634-TIPS (8477).

Contact Pam Eubanks at [email protected].

SUSPECT’S DESCRIPTION
Witnesses describe the driver as a black male in his late 30s or early 40s. He was wearing a blue button-up shirt.

The vehicle is a white, unmarked van with windows on all sides. The van had a North Carolina license plate with a V, Z and C in its first three letters.

INFORMATION
A similar incident happened in the Lakewood Ranch Golf & Country Club in February 2008 in which two girls were crossing the street when the driver of an unmarked white van told them their mother had asked him to pick them up.

The suspect, a white, balding male in his 50s with a thin mustache, was believed to be involved in a similar incident near Perico Island about a month earlier.