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SARATOGA SPRINGS — Investigators have determined that an incident that a parent previously reported as an abduction attempt on her son was actually a case where three people approached the boy to ask for directions, officials said Monday.
The boy was never in danger during the incident, which took place on March 18, Saratoga Springs City officials said in a Monday news release.
The boy originally told police that he was approached by some people in a white vehicle who asked him to get into the car, according to the news release. He told investigators he said “no” and went home to tell his mother someone tried to kidnap him.
After the report, detectives found the car and the three people who were inside, a man in his 80s and his two sisters, according to the release. The three all cooperated with police and said that they were in the area and approached the child, according to the release.
Police determined that the man had recently bought a home in the area and was trying to drive there but became lost. A real estate agent had previously driven the group to the home, according to the release.
The man and the women told police they approached the boy to see if he knew the name of the street they were driving on.
They said they didn’t ask the boy to get in the car, the release states. However, they did tell the police that “the child immediately appeared uneasy and left the scene,” according to the release.
The three stopped and turned around several times when they were in the area in an attempt to find the man’s home, the release states.
“The suspects acknowledged to detectives that they should not have approached the child and realized after he responded to them with great uneasiness. Until our detectives contacted the suspects, they were unaware of the concern the situation had caused and they feel genuinely remorseful about the incident,” Saratoga Springs City spokesman David Johnson said in the release.
Police have no reason to believe the boy’s account of the incident was false, or that he was attempting to fabricate details about what happened, Johnson said Monday. Police are still investigating whether there was a misunderstanding or something else that led the child to believe the group asked him to get in the car, Johnson added.
The names of the man and his two sisters were not released Monday. The incident remains under investigation, and the case has been sent to the Utah County Attorney’s office to be screened for any potential criminal charges, the release said.
Two other Utah kidnapping reports were determined to be unfounded this month. A Bountiful teenager reported March 4 that someone tried to abduct her, but police later determined that it was a false report.
On March 13, police in Moab determined that two 12-year-old boys fabricated a report of an abduction attempt.
