Police are searching for a red van in the suspected abduction of a 5-year-old girl from a New Jersey park on Monday.
As CrimeOnline previously reported, Dulce Maria Alavez, 5, was last seen at City Park in Bridgeton late Monday afternoon. The girl’s mother told a local news outlet that Dulce and her brother were eating ice cream in the park while her mother was inside a nearby car with another child, since identified as the girl’s 8-year-old aunt, when Dulce’s brother began crying and pointed towards some storage buildings, indicating that this sister had gone in that direction.
“I thought she was just playing hide-and-seek, that she was playing in the woods,” the girl’s mother told WACU.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that authorities have issued an AMBER Alert for Dulce Maria Alavez, reportedly believing that the girl was abducted by a male driving a red van. The kidnapping suspect is described as a Hispanic male with a thin build, between 5 feet 6 inches and 5 feet 8 inches tall, with acne on his face. He was reportedly last seen wearing red pants, a black shirt, and orange sneakers.
According to the report, police believe the suspected kidnapper lured the girl into a red van with tinted windows and a sliding door on the passenger side. As Fox News reports, witnesses told police that the man was seen “leading” the girl into the van.
When she was last seen, Dulce was reportedly wearing a yellow short-sleeved shirt with an elephant print, black-and-white pants, and white dress shoes. The current description of the girl’s clothing varies slightly from the initial description provided, but appears to match the clothing Dulce is seen wearing in the surveillance video.
Anyone with information about the suspected kidnapping is urged to call 911 or Bridgeton police at (856) 451-0033.
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