Abducted Riverside boy, 7, found safe in Nevada
RIVERSIDE, Calif. (AP) — A 7-year-old Riverside boy who was kidnapped while waiting for a school bus was found safe at a Las Vegas home on Saturday morning after police and FBI agents tracked a van 100 miles through the desert.
"He's safe. He's happy and healthy and looks unharmed." Sgt. Dave Stansbury of the Las Vegas Metro Police Department said in a telephone interview.
Two men and a woman were being questioned about the abduction but not immediately arrested and the motive for the kidnapping remained unclear, Stansbury said.
"We don't motivation...we don't know the relationship" between the trio and the boy, he said.
Eduardo was in a foster home in Riverside because his parents, who are from Puerto Rico, are jailed in Santa Ana and San Bernardino in a federal case involving identify theft, authorities said.
The boy was waiting along with other children for a school bus to Mark Twain Elementary School shortly before 8 a.m. Friday, authorities said. A man grabbed him and put him in a car, authorities said.
The kidnappers then switched cars twice more, to a Cadillac Escalade and then a Toyota van, Stansbury said.
Friday night, authorities were tipped that the van might be in the parking lot of a hotel-casino in Laughlin, Nev., Stansbury said.
A task force of Las Vegas and Henderson police and FBI agents found the car and staked it out, then followed it as it left the lot.
Officers finally stopped the van on the Las Vegas Strip, about 100 miles from Laughlin.
"They looked lost. They didn't know what they were doing," he said. "We didn't want to lose them. They got into heavy traffic on the strip."
Eduardo was not in the van but the two men inside were cooperative and gave officers the address of a home in Las Vegas, he said.
Sometime after 5 a.m., task force agents knocked on the door. A woman let them in and they found the boy asleep, Stansbury said.
"Fortunately, it turned out well," Stansbury said.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
