In two different instances, two California men were arrested and face charges of attempted kidnapping in retail environments in California.
Christopher Bullock, who was arrested and charged after an incident in a children’s wear store in Chula Vista, Calif. at the end of last month, is due in San Diego South County Superior Court for a status hearing Thursday morning.
And Rene Lujan, who was arrested and charged for attempted kidnapping at the Mission Valley Mall in San Diego in mid-June, is scheduled for a mental competency hearing on Aug. 15.
Police were called to the Little Kid’s Wear store in Chula Vista, Calif. for a possible attempted robbery shortly before 1 p.m. on July 27. A Chula Vista police officer happened to be in the area and was able to respond quickly, according to Chula Vista Police Department sergeant Anthony Molina.
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“What we had learned from speaking with the mom and the employees was that while shopping, the mom noticed this guy [Christopher Bullock] acting strangely. He was making some comments, which we are not putting out [publicly from the CVPD] yet. She thought he was acting really odd, and [decided] ‘I’m going to get my [2-year-old] kid away from him.’ As she was holding her kid, the guy reached for her and grabbed her arm. At that moment, based on the things that he was saying and the way that he was grabbing her arm, she believed he was trying to take her kid.”
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After breaking away from him, he followed her in what was described as a “chase,” but “exactly how fast” was not known, according to Molina. Store employees intervened, and the police officers showed up shortly after that. Bullock was detained and arrested without incident and “no other force,” Molina said.
Media requests to Little Kid’s Wear were unreturned Wednesday. By chance, the July 27 incident was said to have occurred on what was that location’s final day of operations.
California state law defines kidnapping as moving another person a substantial distance without the person’s consent, by means of force or fear.
Investigators are looking into the 23-year-old suspect’s background and motive. He is believed to have been unhoused in the area.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s 10-year analysis of attempted abductions and related incidents reported that 2 percent of 8,015 incidents occurred in stores. In instances where secondary locations were involved, “as often occurred during short-term abductions and sexual assault,” secluded outdoor areas such as alleys, behind stores, parking lots and garages, cemeteries and other locales were the most common, according to the study.
“Kidnappings are pretty rare. But one thing we wanted the community to be aware of is while hearing the word ‘kidnapping’ is very frightening, the reality is that it does happen,” Molina said.
Lujan, 42, was arrested on June 18, after “grabbing a 6-year-old girl, lifting her off the ground, and walking a couple of feet carrying her, until she began screaming” and he released her, according to the San Diego Police Department. The girl had been pushing her younger sibling in a stroller, and she had been walking next to her mother in the mall.
Lujan first fled by foot through the mall and then in a car, which SDPD officers later located via the department’s automated license plate reader system.
A second attempted kidnapping case of a 5-year-old girl at the Mission Valley Mall on June 13 with “very similar circumstances and [a] suspect description” is actively being investigated to determine if it is tied to the first. A SDPD spokesperson did not respond to a media request Wednesday.
Molina said that more often than not, kidnappings are related to parental issues with people, who have kids in common, where one [parent] takes one [child] from the other. Emphasizing that such instances “are not small things,” he said they typically comprise the majority of kidnapping statistics. Molina added, if two strangers are in a store, and one “grabs the other to move them at all, even a few feet, and you did not want to move, technically, you can charge me with kidnapping,” Molina said.
“Although scary, these things do happen. They are very rare. For us, this is an opportunity to talk about safety, awareness and how everyone [involved in the situation at Little Kid’s Wear] did the right thing here,” he said. “Even if this guy’s intent was not to kidnap in the traditional sense, it’s still scary — a stranger reaching for your arm and your kid. This mom did the right thing. She paid attention. She moved her kid out of the equation. The employees got involved and the police showed up to do their part.”
Separately, in June three suspects, who targeted elderly women in the parking lots of supermarkets and allegedly stole their handbags from their vehicles while the victims loaded up their groceries, were arrested and arraigned. The thieves “canvassed shopping centers and wait for elderly women to leave stores and walk to their cars,” according to a press release issued by San Diego district attorney Summer Stephan’s office. Most of the 15 victims were of Filipino or Asian descent and were between the ages of 64 and 89.