Suspicious Vehicle Sighting Causes Concern Among Parents

Date posted - September 7, 2012

Round Lake, Minnesota — Another sighting of a suspicious vehicle near a school yard had northwest Iowa parents worried on Friday. Lyon County Sheriff Blythe Bloemendaal says the report that came to him was of an attempted abduction in Round Lake, Minnesota.

Central Lyon schools did just that. In fact, they alerted parents via a “SnowCap” message that read, “Lyon County Sheriff informed Central Lyon of an attempted abduction nearby. Parents be alerted.” They followed that up with a robo-call to parents that said that there was an attempted abduction near Round Lake; that they had put measures in place to protect students and were putting extra people in place at the bus stops. They also encouraged parents to pick up their kids at the bus stops.

After receiving this information, since Round Lake is in Nobles County, Minnesota, KIWA News put in a call to the Nobles County Sheriff’s Office to see if we could find out more. Nobles County Sheriff’s Officials told KIWA that there was an incident in Round Lake, but by that time they had determined that it was not an attempted abduction, but only a suspicious vehicle. They said that the subject did appear to have somewhat matched the description in the Iowa attempted abductions, but that no one had left the vehicle or encouraged anyone to get in the vehicle. A Nobles County Sheriff’s Investigator said that officials at the Round Lake-Brewster School did everything right and were on top of the situation.

Lyon County Sheriff Bloemendaal says he’d always rather err on the side of caution.

The man from the earlier incidents is described as being in his 60′s, 6’2″, and about 250 pounds, with longer brown and gray hair and a brown and grey beard. In the Little Rock incident where the man is supposed to have attempted to abduct a 61-year-old woman, the subject was driving a smaller, older, dark-colored or black car with a white top. In one of the Lake Park incidents, a man matching the same description was described as driving a white Ford panel van with both rear windows blacked out. He allegedly approached two different females on separate occasions in Lake Park and attempted to entice them into the van.