Man Goes After 13-Year Old Crystal Lake Girl

This report was sent to Crystal Lake District 47 parents by phone email just after 9 AM:

Name: Suspicious incident

Alert Type: High Importance

Complete Message:

Please be advised that at 7 pm on September 30, District 47 administrators were made aware of a suspicious incident. Apparently, a 13 year old victim was approached by a suspect who tried to give her a piece of paper. The victim ran away and went toward her house. The suspect walked up the victim’s driveway, paused, and left the area in a blue 2000 or 2001 Dodge Caravan. A sketch of the suspect and make and model of the mini-van can be found on the District 47 website.

Possibile suspect vehicle

Please contact the Crystal Lake Police Department’s Investigations Division at 815-459-4481 if you have any information regarding this incident.

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At about 11:45, the Crystal Lake Police sent out this similar notice.  There is a bit more description about the suspect.

Map showing where Fernleaf and Monarch Drives are located south of South High School

On 09/30/2010, @1440 hours, a subject approached a 13 year old victim who was walking home from school in the area of Fernleaf Drive and Monarch Drive, Crystal Lake.

At this time the subject approached the girl and attempted to give her a piece of paper or envelope, but she could not understand what he was saying because he was speaking an unknown foreign language.

The victim ran to her neighbor’s house and she observed the subject walk up her driveway, pause, and then leave the area in a vehicle.

The victim described the suspect as a male, either of Hispanic or Middle Eastern descent, with black hair, dark complexion, clean shaven, between the ages of 45 and 50 years old, wearing a light blue short sleeve button down shirt with black jeans.

The victim described the suspect’s vehicle to be a later model Dodge Caravan which was light blue in color. If anyone has information about the identity of the above subject, please contact the Crystal Lake Police Department at 815-356-3620


Comments

Man Goes After 13-Year Old Crystal Lake Girl — 2 Comments

  1. There were two e-mail messages that went out. The first had a misspelling.

    Aside from the obvious concerns about the incident, a couple of concerns that popped up as a result of this communications evolution:

    1. There was a 13 – 14 hour delay in getting this information out to parents, and the information was not distributed until after the morning bus runs. I had the time and would have provided an extra security layer for my children’s bus stop had I known about this in time.

    2. There was no text message accompanying this notification, and there was only one phone call. Usually, I am notified on my mobile number, my wife’s mobile number, home phone, text and email. When the school district uses the Honeywell Alert system, I expect all the bells and whistles to be going off. This is time critical information that I need to have. For my family this is ***FLASH*** traffic.

    3. Once the messages went out, the d47 site went down. Too much traffic. The web is a wonderful tool for disseminating this information but you have to stress test your site. If you send out a message of this type you should expect a huge spike in traffic.

    This is a serious incident and I don’t like to poke fun at it but, this is one of those “Come On Man!” moments that the district can learn from.

  2. BTW: I also have a pet peeve with the “victim / suspect” language used here. Unless there is something that they are not telling us those are the incorrect terms. There is a complainant and subject… or a target and a subject. Was there a crime here that they are not communicating to us?

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