A horrified mum joined police in warning about a ‘predatory paedophile’ who tried to lure two young girls into a van by tempting them with ‘bunny rabbits’.
Little Lacie Perryman, six, and sister Skye, three, were playing in their front garden when the van pulled onto the kerb and a ‘strange’ man told them they were ‘pretty’.
Shocked mum Stacey, 26, was alerted when son Rylie, aged nine, dashed in to to say a man had gestured to the girls to get into his van.
Stacey ran outside in time to see Skye walking up the garden path towards the van as the male leaned out his window ‘ready to pounce’.
Full-time mum Stacey screamed at her youngest daughter to stop, which startled the van driver, who sped off down the road.
She pursued the van driver on foot following the “attempted abduction” before she lost him.
Stacey said both girls were badly shaken up as naive Skye was ‘curious’ – but Lacie refused to approach the van.
She said: “I was so mad. I was screaming at him. I even ran down the road after him. I couldn’t believe it.
“He looked at me and couldn’t get away quick enough.
“Lacie said he kept telling her to come to the van because he had something he wanted to show her.
“What if he had taken her? Then what?”
Police are appealing for witnesses to catch the man following the attempted abduction outside the family home in Hartcliffe, Bristol, on July 28 at around midday.
Father Shaun Perryman, 30, a mechanic, said he wouldn’t be letting his children outside alone after the scare.
He said: “The kids won’t be going outside.
“My little boy was scared to go to bed because he thought the bloke was going to come back. He knows where we live when we don’t know who he is.
“It’s terrible. It just makes me feel scared. Just ridiculous your kids can’t wait five minutes outside the house.”
Stacey was looking after her three children while her husband was at work when the van driver approached them.
She had told the children to wait in the front garden of their house – a short distance from three primary schools – and went to lock the back door before they headed out.
But while her back was turned a van, believed to have been driven by a lone man, mounted the pavement at the front of the house.
The man wound down his window and tried to beckon the children over to him.
He allegedly told Lacie and Skye they were ‘very pretty’ and they should come over to the van ‘because he had bunny rabbits in the back’.
The suspect has been described as tanned, between 40 and 50 years old, bald, wearing glasses and had a grey beard but no moustache, according to the children.
He was reportedly driving a small white van, with a smashed rear windscreen and a sheet covering it, and a yellow stripe running between the front and back wheels.
Police said: “On Friday July 28 we received a report of a suspicious incident on Kilmersdon Road, Hartcliffe.
“A man spoke to two young girls from inside a white van as they played in the front garden of a house at approximately 12pm.
“Officers have completed house to house enquiries and our priority now is to trace the driver.
“We have not received any other reports of suspicious behaviour but continue to carry out patrols in the area.
“We always encourage vigilance and awareness of personal safety and stranger danger in schools and among young people.”
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