On Friday morning, a 14-year-old girl from Eelde reported escaping a abduction attempt by two men in a white van.
Translation by Traci White
RTV Drenthe writes that the girl was biking on the Zevenhuizerweg on Friday morning when a man jumped out of a white van and tried to pull her into the vehicle. The police report that a man dressed in black, including a black hat and possibly a black scarf over his face, got out of the vehicle and briefly caught the girl twice. She reported that after she managed to escape, the van drove away.
The abduction attempt reportedly occurred between 10:15 and 10:30 on Friday morning near the Klompenmuseum in Eelde. According to the police report, the vehicle was a white Volkswagen Transport van without any sort of logos or signage and a yellow license plate.
Suspect description
The suspect that the police are looking for is a white man around 30 or 40 years old and around 180 centimetres tall (nearly 6 feet). The young woman told the police that at least one of the men in the vehicle spoke Dutch without any apparent foreign accent. The driver of the vehicle may have black hair.
The police are encouraging any witnesses to the incident or anyone who saw the vehicle matching that description around the time of the incident to call them at 0900-8844. RTV Drenthe reports that a similar incident occurred near Rotterdam earlier last week involving a black van, but it is unclear if the two kidnapping attempts are connected in any way. In 2017, there were 288 kidnappings across the Netherlands.
Although this alleged incident involved suspects whom the victim did not know, most abductions in the Netherlands involve a parent or someone else that the child knows. Many incidents classified as kidnappings are foreign partners returning to their home countries with their children after leaving their Dutch spouse: these cases are categorised as abduction if the children are taken away without informing their former partner.
Photo source: Google Maps
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