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Third Abduction Try Reported In Northwest Suburban School District

UPDATED 02/02/12 5:37 a.m.

CARPENTERSVILLE, Ill. (CBS) - For the third time in a month, police in the northwest suburbs are seeking someone who may have tried to abduct a child.

As WBBM Newsradio's Bob Roberts explains, the latest incident was Tuesday afternoon. The target was a 10-year-old boy who was walking home from a friend's house in the Algonquin Lakes subdivision in Algonquin around 3:45 p.m. Tuesday.

LISTEN: WBBM Newsradio's Bob Roberts reports

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The boy told his parents and Algonquin police that a man in his early 30s asked him to climb into his white Ford E-series cargo van.

The very same white van was implicated in two earlier attempts, but in those cases two men were inside.

On Jan. 17, a 13-year-old girl was walking to her bus stop at about 9:30 a.m. Jan. 17 on Teton Parkway, just north of Glacier Parkway. The men had asked the girl, a student at Algonquin Middle School, to get into the vehicle and became "more verbally forceful" when she refused, District 300 said at the time.

And on Jan. 3, two men in a white van had approached a boy at his bus stop in Carpentersville's Silverstone subdivision. The boy also was an Algonquin Middle School student.

That followed a nearly identical incident just over a year before at the same bus stop.

Carpentersville Community Unit School District 300 Safety Officer Gary Chester warned parents of the latest incident Wednesday. He said the purpose of doing so was "simply to remind you to please reinforce with your child the dangers of street encounters and stranger interaction," it said.

In his email Wednesday, Chester suggested parents discuss safety precautions with their children.

Students should not talk to strangers who try to talk to them on the way home from school and should run home or to the nearest public place and tell an adult if the stranger continues to talk or stops his or her vehicle. They should never walk up to the car of — or go with — a stranger, and it is better if they do not walk alone, he said.

If someone does approach them like in the previous incidents, students should call 911 immediately if they have cellphones and try to remember as much as they can about the stranger and vehicle, he said.

Algonquin police also stressed that similar incidents should be reported without delay.

The Sun-Times Media Wire contributed to this report.

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