Parents tense following county kidnapping

Young Chang

Sheranne Kemme was handing out bread Wednesday to a little boy she

didn’t know when suddenly she, a parent to 8-year-old triplets, was

made to feel like the bad guy.

The parents of the little boy panicked after seeing their son, who

wanted to feed nearby birds, taking bread from a stranger. They urged

him to “get back here.”

“Here I am, with my three kids, I’m a mom, and they’re worried

about me,” Kemme said at TeWinkle Park in Costa Mesa. “Everyone’s

tense. There is heightened awareness and heightened fear now.”

Kemme cited the news of a young Stanton girl’s kidnapping to

explain a general uneasiness among parents this week. She was worried

enough before hearing the story of 5-year-old Samantha Runnion, she

said.

“Now we’re worried about letting our kids go outside and play in

front of the house,” Kemme said.

Newport-Mesa parents reacted similarly to the fourth disappearance

to make national headlines this year.

Samantha, whose body was found in a forest in Riverside County on

Wednesday, was reportedly playing outside her house with a fellow

5-year-old on Monday when a man pulled up in a two-door Honda or

Acura, asked her to help him find his puppy and then snatched her.

Orange County Sheriff’s officials found evidence that Samantha had

been sexually assaulted and suffocated. They are searching for a

suspect described as a Latino male between 25 and 40, with a thin

mustache and short black hair. He was described to have been wearing

a button-down, light blue shirt at the time of the kidnapping and

might have been in a light green.

Newport Beach parent Anne Peterson is most disturbed by the fact

that the suspect kidnapped Samantha in broad daylight, in the

presence of another child and right in front of her own home.

“I just think it’s more important now to keep a closer eye on

them, since no one’s been apprehended,” said Peterson, who was

watching her daughter Avery play with six friends at Mariner’s Park

for her birthday.

The mother said she has changed in small ways since hearing the

tragic news about Samantha.

“Sometimes, I’ve even sat in my car and done work, but I’m sitting

here today,” Peterson said, patting the picnic table at the Newport

Beach park. “It’s kind of unnerving. It’s so sad.”

Kim Corral said she feels that no place, not even gated

communities, can keep kids safe from harm anymore.

“I’m very disturbed,” she said, while pushing 9-month-old Jack on

a swing at Mariner’s Park. “It’s a very unfortunate situation.”

Sandy McCreight, a nearby parent watching her daughter at the same

park, said she gets a sick feeling in her gut when she thinks about

Samantha and her parents.

“Because they’re parents, like I’m a parent. You can never be able

to say, ‘God, I know what they’re going through,’” McCreight said.

Peterson added that news about kidnappings scares, most of all,

the children. Her 9-year-old daughter Amanda recently asked whether

the same sort of kidnapping could happen here in Newport Mesa.

“And I had to say ‘yeah,’” Peterson said. “Which, [for] a child,

just doesn’t seem fair.”