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8-Year-Old Girl Found Safe, Police Search For Kidnapping Suspect

DENVER (CBS4)- An 8-year-old girl who was abducted from the area of 475 S. Raleigh at about 1:30 p.m. Thursday was found safe about 90 minutes later.

The girl walked into a Diamond Shamrock convenience store at 1945 Federal Blvd. at about 3:00 p.m. and told the employee she had been kidnapped.

KIDNAPPING-SUSPECT
A composite sketch of the kidnapping suspect from Denver police. (credit: Denver Police Dept.)

Police are looking for an white man wearing a white T-shirt and blue jeans. He has short brown hair and green or hazel eyes. The suspect has two tattoos on his upper right arm. On the inner right arm is a tattoo of unknown letters. On the right outer arm he has a tattoo of "SS."

The suspect was driving a white van with sliding doors, possibly a white Ford passenger van, with a ladder on top.

The girl was interviewed by detectives at Denver Police headquarters.

"At this point in time, she is not being reported as being harmed or have suffered any type of injury at all," said Denver Police spokesman Detective John White.

She told officers she was outside in the alley in the 400 block of S. Raleigh Street and S. Stuart Street in Denver, a playing with her friend, 11-year-old Eric Martinez. That's when a white van pulled up beside them.

The driver asked the children to help him put something in the van. That's when the girl told police the man took her and drove away.

Eric was not harmed. His family was concerned for his safety when news of the kidnapping reached them.

"I just wanted to cry. I don't know, I don't know if something would happen to him, I don't know what I would do," said Eric's mother.

"The moment that they called me, the moment that they told me that my little brother may have been missing, my heart just felt like it got ripped out of my chest," said Eric's sister Jessica Martinez.

Eric told his sister what happened to his friend.

"The guy picked her up and threw her in the van so he wanted to help her, but he said that he ran and tried to get help for her," said Jessica.

Police do not know where the suspect took the little girl in the hour and a half she was missing.

"Do not trust strangers. You just simply cannot do it," said White.

The search continues for the suspect.

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