According to Deputy Police Chief Gary MacNamara, the boy was walking home from school on Meadowbrook Road when a man driver, who just left Interstate 95, stopped and asked for directions to Home Depot.
The boy, MacNamara said, ran home and reported the incident to his mother, who called police. But an investigation determined there no abduction attempt, MacNamara said. "It was just poor judgment on the part of the driver to ask a child for directions," he added.
Unfortunately, MacNamara said, "as these things do, [rumors] spread quickly" through local schools that someone had tried to snatch a child from the street. One woman even berated a police officer at the headquarters' front desk for what she felt was authorities' failure to notify parents about the incident.
MacNamara said when an incident occurs that police officials feel parents should be aware of, then notification is made through the schools, the media and, if necessary, the Reverse 9-1-1 system.
"This was portrayed as something that it was not," MacNamara said of the Meadowbrook Road incident.
He added, however, that the 12-year-old acted appropriately when he notified his parents.
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