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From: Jasper
Date: 3/16/01
Time: 1:03:08 AM
This afternoon I got a call from my son David telling me that my 7-year-old granddaughter Sherelle and her friend Krystal were missing. He was an emotional wreck. I joined him and Sherelle's mother at the school where everyone was, understandably, shaken and doing everything they could to locate the kids.
There was no negligence on the part of anyone. The teacher's, the parents and the students did all of the things that they were supposed to do. Sherelle's mother had come to the school to pick up both of my granddaughters. She was waiting inside the building for Sherelle's twin sister who had a later class when Sherelle asked to go outside with the other kids who were waiting for a bus. Her friend Krystal was supposed to go to a secure building down the street until her mother could get off from work and pick her up.
When Sherelle's mother went out to find Sherelle, she was nowhere to be seen. The situation was complicated by a story one the kids' classmates told that Sherelle and Krystal said they were going to run away (they didn't). That's when the teachers found out that Krystal was missing, too. We all wasted a good hour and a half searching for them in and around the school. The police were less than useless and only one news station bothered to get involved in the search. A reporter named Mike Lewis (a good guy - never thought I'd say that about a reporter) and his cameraman came to the school, got pictures of the girls and broadcast them.
While everyone was running around, knocking on doors, passing out flyers and trying to figure out where the girls might have gone, we got a call from a police precinct on the other side of town. The girls had been found.
This is what happened….
When Sherelle and Krystal went outside, a woman grabbed both of them in a tight grip - in the middle of the crowd of other children - and told them to be quiet and come with her. The children were too startled, hurt and confused to do anything else. At their first opportunity they broke away and ran. The woman caught up with them and grabbed them again in a firm grip. The woman used the kids to beg for money as they began a six or seven mile walk to the other side of town.
Early on, Kristyl proved to be too much trouble for the woman who let her go. Krystal tried to walk back without knowing where she was. I don't have the details on where, why or how she was found but we got a good idea of what happened to Sherelle.
The woman took Sherelle to a restaurant where she approached two other women, telling them that Sherelle was her daughter. Sherelle kept a cool head and told one of the women in the restaurant that the woman holding her was NOT her mother. The kidnapper tried to drag Sherelle out but one of the women grabbed her, made a general disturbance and told her that she was going to call the police. The kidnapper fled. My granddaughter was saved.
The story made the 11:00 local news on Channel 4. It was the lead story and it lasted about a minute and a half. That was that. None of the other stations ever showed up. The girls gave an excellent description of the kidnapper - but it was my son, not the police, who got the description. I really don't think they gave a shit. With the two-man exception of the reporter Mike Lewis and his cameraman, the media demonstrated in no uncertain terms that they didn't give a shit, either. --Jasper