Bangor police said a report about a person in a white van who approached a person holding a baby ended up being a 77-year-old woman in need of directions.
Police addressed concerns about a widely shared Facebook post over the weekend about an attempted abduction.
“Abductors don’t even operate white vans since the advent of Facebook. It’s very 90s,” Bangor Police Lt. Tim Cotton wrote in a Facebook post on Monday.
Cotton said someone was concerned about a van driver who stopped and talked to a person holding a small child.
“Here is the story: someone in our region was concerned about an interaction they observed in which the driver of a van stopped to ask a person where the closest gas station was. This is a common question and it seems plausible that a white van from ‘away’ might need gas. Additionally, the driver in a white van from ‘away’ might not know where the closest gas station is,” Cotton wrote.
*(On a more bizarre note- I was notified that there were two posts being shared- completely different from one another-…
Posted by Bangor Maine Police Department on Monday, 8 October 2018
Cotton said a bystander witnessed the interaction and called police about what they perceived as a possible kidnapping situation. They also made a Facebook post about it.
Police located the driver and discovered that the 77-year-old woman was actually in need of gas, and also loves babies.
“The driver was a 77-year-old woman who both needed gas, and, oddly, loved babies. She had just used the short interlude to take a quick gander at the child as she is KOABF (kind of a baby fan),” Cotton wrote. “The 77-year-old female operator of the van was horrified that anyone might consider that she was out kidnapping babies. She has no history of such things and has a fairly clean driving record.”
Cotton is reminding Mainers to be weary of Facebook posts about abduction attempts.
“While the post was shared 1,305 times in our area (incidentally, about 49 times with me) and caused terror in the hearts of all people who have children or white vans, no one was kidnapped, touched, or harmed during the friendly colloquy,” Cotton wrote.
Featured photo by Sven Storbeck used under Creative Commons license 3.0.
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