A recent email circulating throughout Charles County is, fortunately, a false alarm.  However, the misrepresentation of facts and the email’s wide circulation nearly gave birth to a local urban legend. 

Like many urban legends, this one attempts to warn the reader against a horrible fate; in this instance, the kidnapping of small children from local parks during Charles County Youth Football League (CCYFL) games.  This is one version of the email that The Bay Net received:

We just received this update from the County……

Hello CCYFL presidents and Nick.  I just wanted to keep you abreast of the developments concerning the attempted kidnapping of one of the kids associated with the Wildcats.  The person below was recently arrested for attempted kidnapping in another case.  The little girl in our case told her father that the man in the picture was the attempted abductor. The parents spent yesterday evening with detectives going over
everything. 

Leonard- Waldorf Wildcats

Andrea Sanford, President of the La Plata Blue Knights Association, told The Bay Net that she felt the above message was a mix of information from various emails with each new version becoming more exaggerated. 

“As far as I know there was no abduction of anybody and no attempted abduction,” Sanford explained.

In a statement sent via email she wrote:

“Thursday, September 21st I attended a Charles County Advisory Board meeting for all football leagues and several topics were reviewed. One of the items discussed was notice of ‘A possible attempted child abduction that occurred Tuesday evening at White Plains’.” (Emphasis added.)

Both Tom Roland, Chief of Parks & Grounds for Charles County and Lieutenant Kevin Leahy of the Criminal Investigations Department of the Charles County Sheriff’s Office gave The Bay Net a similar account of events.   

Leahy told The Bay Net that on September 18th a 5-year-old girl went missing at White Plains Park for a short time.  An individual found the child alone and brought her back to the playing fields.  This individual was questioned at the time and determined to have had no intention of hurting the child.  

Because the child later said something about a vehicle factoring into her missing moments, police canvassed the area.  The investigation revealed no evidence that an attempted abduction had occurred. 

“While we have found no evidence that an abduction attempt has occurred, we aren’t ready to say it didn’t happen since you can never know for certain.  We’ve just found no evidence,” said Leahy.

The lieutenant also confirmed that there have been no calls to Laurel Springs Park for any other recent abduction attempts.

Tom Roland of Parks & Grounds explained that while CCYFL officials agreed the White Plains event didn’t seem to be an abduction attempt, they chose to err on the side of caution and called an e