LONE TREE, Colo. — A rumor of an attempted abduction at Park Meadows Mall is not true, the city of Lone Tree said.
Facebook posts about the alleged abduction circulated on Tuesday. They described an incident in which a woman kidnapped a 3-year-old girl who was standing in line to see Santa with her family last week. The girl was found with the help of security guards and store employees who recognized the child’s description, the posts said.
According to the city, that did not happen.
In a statement, Lone Tree wrote this:
There have been rumors circulating on social media about an attempted child abduction at Park Meadows Retail Resort. Our Police Department’s investigative team has found these rumors to be unsubstantiated. After interviewing individuals and reviewing security camera footage it was found that a child, while walking with their family, mistakenly began following another woman who was dressed similarly to their mom. Park Meadows security soon reunited the child with their family, as they do often when children get separated from their parents. There was no malicious intent or act.
Park Meadows remains a safe place for families. The Lone Tree Police Department operates a substation at Park Meadows and works daily with Park Meadows security to ensure it remains a safe place to visit. Ever since the retail resort became a part of the City of Lone Tree in 2006, there have been zero cases of successful or attempted child abduction at Park Meadows.
The Lone Tree Police Department told 9NEWS that no police report was filed.
Also mentioned in the viral posts was the idea of human trafficking. Facebook users suggested that it was the reason for the purported kidnapping, but the FBI has said trafficking cases rarely work in this way.
Two years ago, a separate Facebook post from a woman claiming she was followed was shared more 50,000 times. In that instance, the young woman wrote three men went inside a Ross store in Douglas County behind her and her kids. She believed the men were involved in sex trafficking. An employee of the store and the sheriff’s office debunked her story.
The FBI told 9NEWS then that sex traffickers don’t typically find their victims like this, and instead target high-risk children like runaways and kids who come from a high-risk situation.
“It’s a completely different crime,” Beth Boggess, the FBI supervisory special agent who heads Colorado’s violent crimes against children unit, told 9NEWS in 2017. “We don’t see kidnapping for human trafficking.”
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