No Riverside Abduction Of Young Girl, Police Say
RIVERSIDE (CBSLA) — Authorities have determined that a young girl was in fact not kidnapped from in front of a Riverside apartment complex Sunday night. Instead, what 911 callers witnessed was a group simply corralling one of their own drunk friends into a car.
The situation began when witnesses first called Riverside police to report the possible abduction in front of an apartment complex in the 6500 block of Doolittle Avenue at about 7:35 p.m. Sunday.
The callers told police they had seen two men grabbing a Hispanic girl and trying to put her in the trunk of their car, according to police.
"The juvenile may have fought with the subjects and they then forced her in the back seat of the car and drove away," an initial statement from police said.
Surveillance video from the complex appeared to corroborate the report, police said.
However, on Monday, police investigators learned that the woman in question was just a young woman from Placentia who had gone swimming with friends in the Santa Ana River and had gotten drunk during the course of the day.
On their way home, the group stopped the car so she could grab something from the trunk. Being intoxicated, the woman tried to climb into the trunk, police say. At that point, her friends grabbed her, pulled her out of the trunk and placed her in the car.
They then finished their drive home.