A mother in Texas is coming out after her home security camera caught her kids and their friends being almost kidnapped.
Genna Skolnik first showed WFAA, an ABC News station, video from her door camera and said the event happened on Monday. On “Good Morning America,” the Dallas mom and her kids Zachary and Jonathan talked about what happened when two cars pulled up next to the boys and their 9-year-old friends who were playing outside.
“I heard screaming and I thought, and I could hear a commotion outside,” said Skolnik.
Zachary remembered when he thought things might have changed.
“We get onto the sidewalk and we try to skip past and I hear the driver telling my friends to get into their car,” he added.
Someone caught the boys running and screaming as they ran away.
“I was the first one at the door screaming, ‘Someone’s trying to kidnap us!'” Zachary told me.
A guy in shorts and a white T-shirt can be seen getting out of a white SUV and running after Skolnik’s son Jonathan on video footage from a door camera.
Jonathan said the man was calling to him and trying to get him to get into the SUV.
“He said, ‘The car has a football in the back.'” After that, let’s get in the back of the car. I then said, “I’m sorry.” Jonathan told the story. “I don’t talk to strangers, and I ran away.”
Later, Skolnik went outside with a camera on her cell phone. The suspect saw her and ran away, but Skolnik was able to take a picture of the SUV’s license plate, which she gave to ABC News.
Monday morning, just a few miles from Skolnik’s house, another close call with theft was caught on camera.
It can be seen on another security video that a teenage girl is hiding behind a neighbor’s car to avoid being robbed by a guy.
Shane Burke, who owns the car, told “GMA” that the teen came to his door and asked for help.
It was said that someone she didn’t know had been following her around and looking at her, which made her feel uncomfortable. “She was really upset,” Burke said.
As kids go back to school, parents and guardians should talk to them and remind them of how to stay safe when they are walking, waiting at bus stops, and other places. Callahan Walsh is the executive director of the Florida office of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
“Children should be very wary of strangers that are in a car approaching them,” he told “GMA.” “We know that an automobile is used in the vast majority of attempted and successful abductions.” The thieves always use the same tricks, like asking for directions, looking for a lost cat, or having candy. So, parents should talk to their kids about how to spot these dangerous situations and stay away from them.
Experts also tell parents not to put their kids’ names on their backpacks so that people don’t call them by name and get them mixed up. They also tell parents to limit the information they post about their kids on social media and not post back-to-school shots that show a child’s age, school, grade, or other information that could be used to find out who they are.
Both attempted kidnappings in Texas are still being looked into by police, who say the two cases don’t seem to be connected.
Following the attempted kidnapping, the Skolniks say they feel lucky.
“We got lucky. We’re very thankful for that, Genna Skolnik said.
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