Colorado police are searching for a man who sneaked in through the bedroom window of an eight-year old girl and managed to remove her from the house before she struggled and got away.
Police in Aurora, Colo., say the man likely removed a window screen, opened an unlocked window, and entered the girl’s bedroom after watching her from outside, the Denver Post reports. Police are treating the case as a stranger kidnapping, which is rare.
Beatrice Padilla, the girl’s grandmother, said she shared the room with another child and that she was doing homework on her bunk bed earlier that night. She said the man put his hand over her granddaughter’s mouth, but the girl screamed. Her father woke up and ran outside to find the girl running back toward the house from an alley.
Police Chief Dan Oates asked for community vigilance, and advised parents to take steps to protect their children. “We think there’s a predator out there. And he has to be caught, and he has to be stopped,” he said at a news conference. “I’ve been in this business a long time, and I’ve never seen anything like this.”