Stranger Danger in North Rockland

Parents concerned about reports of “red-haired man” luring kids. Police looking into it, but caution that such reports often prove to be innocuous or inaccurate

BY DYLAN SKRILOFF

On Tuesday Haverstraw Police received a report of a man inappropriately making verbal contact with a child after he got off a school bus on Rosman Road. The story has set off a social media-driven wave of disturbance among parents in the North Rockland and led to alerts from the local PTA and a phone call from one of the local schools.

Other reports of a stranger contacting children surfaced later in the week but Lt. Martin Lund said only the original complaint can be substantiated.

“We had a report of an incident on Tuesday that we’ve been investigating. And we had a report that came in [Thursday] that was unsubstantiated…It’s common to hear such reports, but most of them don’t prove to be accurate,” Lund said.

Concern about the incident or incidents led to the Haverstraw police receiving over 50 calls from worried parents Friday morning, some saying speculative things such as they heard there had been an abduction in the neighborhood, Lund said.

On Friday an apparently fabricated report about another alleged incident, this time on Rt. 210 in Stony Point, also popped up on the social network, leading numerous persons to call the Stony Point Police Department, who it turns out never received a report about such an incident.

The original complaint which police consider viable deals with, according to a local resident who described the incident, a white male, age 40-55, reddish hair, “Irish looking,” driving a black or dark charcoal Nissan, possibly two doors, no tinting to the windows, probably with a white NY license plate.

The incident which police have called unsubstantiated had a man with a similar description in a Toyota truck asking a kid if he could help him find his dog.

Adding to the atmosphere of concern, Bergen County’s Cliffview Pilot reports that an arrest of a 20-year-old man attempting to lure young girls was made on Thursday in Tenafly, New Jersey, not far from the Rockland border.

  North Rockland, rockland county, sexual predators