Police seek man outside school

Press, 21 July 1989, Page 4

Police seek man outside school

Police patrols have been stepped up in Linwood to catch a man who has been trying to entice young children into a car. Five boys and girls from Phillipstown School have been approached in the last two days, some as young as six and seven. “He beckons them over, offers them lollies and asks them to get in the car,” the principal, Mr Ivan Bolton, said yesterday.

“It is of great concern. The worrying part is his persistence.” On Wednesday, the man called to a girl as she walked from the school library to her classroom at 1 p.m.

She ran to tell a teacher, but by the time the message was relayed, the man had driven off. The police are treating

the incidents as serious and are increasing patrols in the area, Detective Senior-Sergeant Colin Dalzell said.

The school has devised a system where pupils being picked up by car have to wait on the veranda or in classrooms for their parents. “There’s the problem that someone will tell the pupil, ‘your mum has told me to pick you up.’ That’s the old trick,” said Mr Bolton.

The school’s “stranger danger” programme had helped thwart the man’s approaches, he said. “The pupils have panicked and ran when they’ve been called out to.”

The pupils have been unable to give the police a useful description of the man or the car.