Claim: Woman narrowly escapes abduction attempt in the parking lot of a Cedar Falls
Example: [Collected via e-mail, 2004]
Subject: scary story...
Ok, so you know how you always get those
It was Saturday afternoon at 11:30 and her and her daughter were walking in to
She said "hey, where's your car?" As she started walking towards him, she noticed she was right in front of a big maroon van with both back doors wide open. She quickly stepped back and noticed that three guys were kind of behind her. She saw the inside of the van. It was a maroon van, no windows in the back or on the sides with red carpet on the inside, completely empty. The gentleman was trying to say thank you and held out his hand. She quickly said your welcome and turned around and headed inside with her daughter. I guess two of the guys tried following her, but it didn't last long.
As she was walking in, she said to her daughter that she thought they were going to shove her in the van. Her daughter thought so too. Nothing was said about it until people convinced her to call
I just wanted to let everyone that I know about this, because it is very scary. I am actually really freaked out by it because just
One thing the police said was that there is lots of stuff happening out at the new Cedar Falls
So everyone, please be very careful when you go places, especially
Do with this e-mail what you will. I don't care if you pass it on or not, I just wanted everyone to be aware of this. Especially my friends and family who go that the CF
your surroundings, and don't be stupid like me and sit in an unlocked car and look at your pictures.
Origins: Crime warnings are generally a good thing — we all want to know what to watch out for; we all want to know how to protect ourselves from those who might seek to do us harm. Inevitably, though, the result of our being inundated with such warnings (both real and fictional) is
that we start to view everything, even the most ordinary events of daily life, as evidence that crime is all around us. Plenty of people have come away from encounters with parking lot perfume vendors convinced that they have barely escaped being drugged and robbed, all because of a baseless bit of scarelore that began circulating several years ago. This message appears to be more of the same.
The facts described in the message quoted above are essentially true: at about
According to the Cedar Falls police, however, the interpretation of events as described in the message quoted above (i.e., the dropped package was a deliberate ploy used as part of an attempted abduction scheme) was not supported by their investigation:
The incident happened at about 11:30 a.m. Police looked at a videotape from the parking lot and found that the men did not make any physical contact with [the woman] and had not spoken to her or made any actions that would indicate an abduction was going to occur. Police Capt. Jeff Olson said no crime occurred and the men and the woman both continued to shop at the store. Olson said the woman was startled by the other men at the van and walked to meet her adult daughter a short distance away.
According to Cedar Falls Police, the facts and tone of the e-mail are not consistent with the incident.
Moreover, Cedar Falls police contradicted the claim that "there is lots of stuff happening out at the new Cedar Falls
Cedar Falls Police issued a press release that stated The e-mail circulating also mentions mobile meth labs operating out of the
Police also indicate
Last updated: 22 July 2011
 | Sources: |
Ericson, John. "Wal-Mart Abduction Rumors Overblown." The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier. 18 June 2004.
