Boy found safe in LV

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- A 7-year-old foster child who was kidnapped while waiting for his 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." Las Vegas police Sgt. Dave Stansbury said.

The boy knew his kidnappers, Riverside police said at a news conference Saturday afternoon.

Police arrested two men who were driving a van believed to be connected to the crime, the Riverside Press Enterprise reported. They were booked on probable cause of abduction, said Don Roberts, supervisory special agent with the FBI in Riverside. Their names were not released.

Eduardo Rivera 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 alongside other children for a school bus shortly before 8 a.m. Friday when 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, 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 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.

The child is expected to be returned to his foster home soon, authorities said.