The victim in this case was a 12-year-old girl. She reported that a man attempted to lure her into his red Toyota truck while she was walking to school at 8:50 a.m. on October 15, 2014. He told the girl that her mother had been hospitalized, and he said that he had been sent to retrieve her, according to New York Daily News. He was lying. The man drove away after his target reached for her cellphone.
The New York Daily News provided a description of the suspect.“‘African-American male’ in his 50s to 60s who is ‘short and heavily built’ with a buzz cut of peppered color hair and a ‘scratchy smoker’s voice’ and a chin beard with no hair over the lip.”
Even though there are no eyes in the Oregon police sketch, that doesn’t mean the suspect was blind. The man had eyes. It’s just that his target couldn’t remember what they looked like. He had a nose, too. Once again, the child simply couldn’t recall the details.
Although the young female victim had trouble remembering what the suspect’s eyes and nose looked like, she did recall a pair of bumper stickers affixed to the car. The two stickers read, “Keep Portland Weird” and “Baby on Board.” The Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office reported that the girl also recalled a partial license plate number on the 1990s single-cab Toyota pickup truck, XQZ-*** (last three digits unknown) and an animal-shelter sticker including a design of a blue dog.
Earlier this year, another shady sketch made headlines, but this one wasn’t a police sketch, it wasn’t from Oregon, and missing eyes weren’t the problem. In Massachusetts, a woman decided to create her very own license plate with cardboard and colored markers. The 20-year-old woman with a suspended driver’s license and an apparent penchant for homemade cardboard license plates was Jahanna Baez-Rodriguez. She faces charges of driving with a suspended license and attaching false plates. Baez-Rodriguez has received a summons to appear in court on charges stemming from the bizarre incident.
What do you think of the Oregon police sketch? Eyes and a nose seem like important details, but if the victim couldn’t remember what they looked like, then the forensic artist couldn’t draw them. Comments are welcome.
