‘Stranger Danger' incidents rattle DeKalb neighborhoods

By David Ibata

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

DeKalb County school officials alerted parents Tuesday about a man who allegedly tried to grab a child as she walked to school with two other girls, Channel 2 Action News reported.

The incident happened Tuesday morning as two sisters, ages 10 and 11, and a friend were walking on North Hairston Road to Stone Mill Elementary School, in the unincorporated county west of Stone Mountain.

“This guy came up behind them – he was walking slow behind them – and he grabbed my oldest granddaughter,” Vanessa Lumpkin, the child’s grandmother, told Channel 2.

As the man tried to pull one girl away, she and her friends fought the man.

“The other girl jumped on his back, and her sister said, ‘Stop!’ She was kicking him and screaming, and then he ran off,” Lumpkin said.

The girls reported the incident to their teachers as soon as they arrived at school, according to a letter sent home to parents from Stone Mill Principal Rita H. Harper.

“Our School Resource Officer immediately began investigating the incident by taking statements from students and getting descriptions,” Harper said in the letter.

The suspect was described as a slim black male, 30 to 40 years old, with long dreadlocks. He was wearing an Army jacket with a black hood, blue jeans and black shoes.

In an unrelated incident at the north end of DeKalb County, Dunwoody police put out the word of a suspicious man in a light blue minivan who allegedly approached a young girl on the street, Channel 2 reported.

On Thursday, the driver of the vehicle pulled up to a 10-year-old girl who was walking her dog on Wyntercreek Way in the Wyntercreek subdivision. He asked her age.

“Anyone that wants to stop and converse with a 10 year-old female, we need to know why he was asking what her age was,” Sgt. Mike Carlson of the Dunwoody Police Department told Channel 2.

The girl, Carlson said, “"was a very quick thinker. She fled the scene and ran over to a neighboring house and waited there until the individual left."

The man left the scene at a high rate of speed. But residents told Channel 2 the van was back in the neighborhood on Monday.

"It's very scary. This is a safe neighborhood,” resident Ly Douglass told Channel 2. “We're very frank with the children. If approached by a stranger, they're not to talk to them ... especially someone in a van."

Police said they are stepping up patrols in the area. They said the man's minivan was displaying a dealer tag and had an appliance services magnet on its side.

"Right now we need to identify this individual and find out who he is and what his intent and motive was,” Carlson said.