BY KEITH EPPS
THE FREE LANCE-STAR
The suspicious man seen in the area of a Spotsylvania middle school this week turned out to not be suspicious at all.
Sheriff’s Capt. Mike Harvey said that on Wednesday afternoon, a 14-year-old Freedom Middle School student had walked back to the school about 5:15 p.m. to get keys she had forgotten when she left volleyball practice a short time earlier.
She noticed a man running on the track and remembered seeing him there the day before, Harvey said. After she got her keys and headed back home, the girl said, the man left the track and began to run slowly and walk behind her.
The girl called a male friend who was outside to walk her home, and told police that the man stopped outside her home and began stretching when she went inside.
He was later seen running back toward the middle school.
The school’s principal and the Sheriff’s Office were notified, and an alert was sent out to county residents. Harvey said that even though no actual crime was committed, police wanted to talk to and identify the man.
On Thursday, police did just that. They found the man jogging in the neighborhood again, and Harvey said he was cooperative and shocked to learn that he had caused any alarm.
Harvey said the man is visiting his adult daughter, who lives directly across from the student, and is in town helping with her newborn baby.
He goes jogging every day and cools down by slowly jogging and stretching before going inside.
Harvey called the situation “an unfortunate set of circumstances” and said the man was very upset that he scared the student.
The fear apparently spread to Fredericksburg, where police went to Hugh Mercer Elementary School about 12:25 p.m. Thursday after someone reported seeing a man who matched the description of the man at Freedom Middle School.
Police spokeswoman Natatia Bledsoe said officers searched for about 30 minutes but didn’t find anyone. Someone had called the school, and a school official notified police.
It was the second time this month that a young area girl was startled by a man she didn’t know.
On Jan. 13, a 10-year-old Stafford girl was outside her home in the Amyclae subdivision when a man sitting in an older-model white van called to her: “Come over here. I won’t hurt you.”
The girl ran into her house and told her parents. The man then left the area, police said.
The incident came on the heels of five reported abduction attempts in Spotsylvania and Stafford between Oct. 13 and early November. Those incidents involved females between 8 and 20 years old, and the descriptions of the men varied.
Warrants were obtained in one case, but that suspect has since made his way back to his native El Salvador.
Keith Epps: 540/374-5404 kepps@freelancestar.com
