For the second time in as many months, authorities say they are investigating the attempted kidnapping of a child in Cobb County.
A Mableton man is in jail without bond after a 12-year-old girl told her school counselor she was nearly abducted last week at her bus stop along Riverside Parkway in Austell, Cobb police said.
Based on information the student provided about the man and his vehicle, Cobb police said they stopped 39-year-old Seron D. Kennedy and brought him in for questioning. They charged him with attempted kidnapping, Cobb police spokesman Officer Aaron Wilson said Tuesday.
According to the warrant, the attempted abduction occurred May 5 shortly after 8 a.m. when Kennedy pulled his Ford Mustang into a gas station near the girl’s bus stop. Authorities said he got out of his car and approached the child, who was waiting alone before school, and tried to coax her into his car.
“When the juvenile child refused, said accused did then attempt to force her into his vehicle by pulling on her wrists,” Kennedy’s warrant said. “The child was able to forcefully defend herself.”
Cobb police said in the warrant that Kennedy got back in his car and left the scene, and the incident was captured on surveillance video.
His arrest comes on the heels of another alleged kidnapping attempt in Cobb that made international headlines in recent weeks. Mahendra Patel, a 57-year-old father of two, spent 45 days behind bars after a woman accused him of trying to snatch her 2-year-old son at an Acworth Walmart in March.
But Patel’s attorneys and supporters say surveillance footage from the supermarket contradicts the mother’s claims, and many have urged the Cobb County District Attorney’s Office to drop the charges.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
In Hall County last month, authorities said a 12-year-old’s claims that a man tried to abduct her from a bus stop turned out to be fake.
Deputies sounded the alarm April 24 after the student said a man came out of the woods and grabbed her arm. Investigators spent much of the day searching for a suspect before the girl recanted her story that evening and admitted she made it up.
Stranger-on-stranger abductions are rare. About 2,500 people were reported to have been kidnapped or abducted in Georgia in 2023, according to data provided by the state’s law enforcement agencies to the GBI and federal authorities.
Of the roughly 700 kidnapping victims who were minors, only 56 were taken by people they didn’t know.
AJC data specialist Jennifer Peebles contributed to this article.
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