Police Investigate Suspicious Vans

By Andrew Gorosko

Police are investigating a “suspicious incident” on Wednesday afternoon in which a man driving a van on Washington Avenue/Route 34 stopped and sought to have a 15-year-old girl who was walking alongside the road enter the van.

At about 3:30 pm, the girl was walking alone alongside the westbound road shoulder, when a medium-gray work van stopped in the road and its white male driver asked the teenager if she wanted a ride, police Sergeant Douglas Wisentaner said in a statement. The incident occurred near the Interstate 84 overpasses, in the area between Oakview Road and Pearl Street.

The girl responded that she did not want a ride, but the driver said several times, “Get into the van,” the sergeant explained.

When another vehicle approached the stopped van from behind, the van driver then drove away on eastbound Washington Avenue, police said.

The van’s driver never got out the van during the incident, Sgt Wisentaner said.

After the incident, the girl ran home and reported the matter to her parents who went to the police station to inform police of the incident. The unidentified girl was not injured in the incident, police said.

Police described the van driver as a white man in his 20s with olive-colored skin and “short brown messed-up hair.” The man has brown eyes and a short brown beard with no mustache. He has a thin build and weighs approximately 160 pounds. During the incident the man had on a red sweatshirt and was smoking. The van also carried a male passenger, police said.

The van carried a ladder on it roof. It did not have windows on its rear section. The vehicle bore many dents but was not rusted, police said.

Officer William Hull is investigating the case. Anyone with information on the incident is asked to contact police at 426-5841, or at 270-8888.

Later that afternoon, police received a second report about a suspicious gray van.

A woman jogger who had been running in the Taunton Hill area reported that a gray van had driven past her three times, without its driver stopping or speaking to the woman.

Police said they determined that the incident was not related to the previous incident. The Taunton Hill case involved a lost pizza delivery person who was driving that van, police said.