Staff Writer

The report of an attempted child abduction in East Meredith earlier this month prompted a rash of other unfounded reports of abduction incidents in Delaware County, state police at Oneonta said Wednesday.

A state police memo will go out today to area school districts, detailing what they know about the current investigation and urging school officials not to panic about any other reports they might hear through the grapevine, state police Senior Investigator Ricky Charles said.

"We don't want people to panic," Charles said. "We're investigating one incident. There are no other overt acts of anyone trying to abduct a child."

On May 10, Charles said, troopers received a call from the parent of a 10-year-old girl who had been riding bikes with a friend in a church parking lot in East Meredith, when a man in a small red car asked the girl, whom he knew by name, if she wanted a ride.

Although the girl was able to point the man out to her father, Charles said, the car sped off before the father was able to get a good look at the man or the car's license plate.

Two days later, on May 12, Charlotte Valley Central School Principal Deborah Fox sent a memo to the district's safety committee, detailing the incident and asking committee members to be aware of any unusual incidents.

Fox, who said she wrote the memo after one of the girl's parents called the district, said the memo somehow got circulated to the Sidney Central School District.

"The Sidney principal called me on May 15 to tell me about a similar incident in his district," Fox said.

Charles confirmed that two girls in Sidney said they had seen a red car parked near the school, where cars aren't usually parked, three or four days before the May 10 incident.

A message left Wednesday for Sidney school Superintendent Dominic Nuciforo was not immediately returned.

Based on the information from Sidney school officials, Fox said she sent another memo to district staff and parents on May 15, adding information about the Sidney sighting and the report of a similar incident in Roxbury involving a different vehicle description.

Charles said he did not have any information on the Roxbury report.

"It's snowballing," Charles said. "One attempted abduction has turned into several attempted abductions."

Charles said the Charlotte Valley memo was also somehow circulated to a number of other area school districts, including Delhi and ONC-BOCES.

Building principals in the Oneonta City School District who learned about the Charlotte Valley memos have developed their own to send to parents, district Superintendent James Piscitelli said.

"The memos outline the information they have about the incident and ask parents to talk about this with their children," Piscitelli said.

Fox said she sent the memos as a way to get the word out about a potential danger and to make sure there was a heightened awareness about the East Meredith incident.

"There was no intention to cause panic," Fox said. "They were sent out only to inform parents of a potential threat and to have them be on alert and take precautions for the safety of their children."

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Jill Fahy can be reached at jfahy@thedailystar.com or (607) 441-7221.