"Kidnapper" arrested, quickly released; boy made it up, say Calif. cops
(CBS/KCBS) MONROVIA, Calif. - On Friday, the parents of a 6-year-old Los Angeles County boy told police their son had fought off an abductor in the backyard.
On Monday, authorities arrested a suspect based on the boy's description and the resulting police sketch.
Hours later the suspect was released, when authorities decided the boy made the whole thing up.
The child had told investigators that a man had snatched him from the backyard of his home in the city of Monrovia at about 4 p.m. Friday, according to CBS station KCBS.
"Somebody came onto our property, into the backyard and grabbed our son... put their hand over his mouth, picked him up, kind of like a football," the boy's father told the station over the weekend.After sheriff's detectives released a sketch of the "kidnapper" based on the boy's description, they arrest a man Monday who lived in the same neighborhood as the child.
The boy's mother had also seemed convinced by her child's claims:
"You fight for your life. I told him, 'You bite. You kick. You scream. You yell. You draw blood,'" she said. "I put a little fear in him and sometimes I think that maybe I was doing the wrong thing, but it helped him," she told KCBS.
But soon enough the person said to resemble the man in the sketch was set, after detectives received information that discredited the boy's claims.
They wouldn't say what information turned the 6-year-old's story upside down.