VANCOUVER, Wash. — Police have arrested a suspect accused of attempting to grab a child at a park in Vancouver. Police canvassed the area after the Sunday afternoon incident and released a description of the suspect, asking for the public's help to locate him.
Detectives identified Michael McGlothlin as the suspect through surveillance footage captured from multiple area around the attempted abduction. According to Vancouver police, McGlothlin was driving a rental car at the time, but he was not listed as the renter.
Detectives and multiple law enforcement, including the U.S. Marshals Service, located and arrested McGlothlin while he was walking near the intersection of Northeast 18th Street and Northeast 148th Avenue.
McGlothlin will be booked into the Clark County Jail, police said, for unlawful imprisonment and assault IV, not attempted kidnapping.
An 11-year-old girl was at Lieser Crest Park at around 3:40 p.m. Sunday when a man got out of a car, climbed over a fence and grabbed her, according to the Vancouver Police Department. The child began screaming, and the man let go, ran back to the SUV and drove away.
"She was screaming 'I don't know you, get away from me. Get away from me!'" said a woman who lives near the park and witnessed part of the incident but asked not to be named.
A neighbor's security camera captured footage of the man getting out of the car and approaching the park, then jumping back over the fence and driving away moments later, although the incident itself happened out of frame.
"It's pretty uncommon for stranger-child abductions to happen," Sgt. Julie Ballou, sergeant of the digital evidence cyber-crime unit for the Vancouver Police Department, told KGW on Monday. "When incidents like this occur, it's very alarming. It's very unsettling, not only to law enforcement, but of course, to the family and to the victim, as well as to the rest of the community."