The search for 9-year-old Jennette Tamayo, kidnapped from her
south San Jose home Friday afternoon, ended late Sunday evening
when she turned up
– crying and afraid, but alive – in an East Palo Alto store,
asking for help.
The search for 9-year-old Jennette Tamayo, kidnapped from her south San Jose home Friday afternoon, ended late Sunday evening when she turned up – crying and afraid, but alive – in an East Palo Alto store, asking for help.
Early Monday two Morgan Hill residents helped to capture the suspected kidnapper.
San Jose Police Officer Rick Foster and his K-9 officer dog, Vin, both of whom live in town, got the call about 4 a.m., geared up and went to the San Jose house where police believed the suspect was hiding in an attic.
As Foster related the story to his friend Jo-Ann Cuevas, he lifted Vin up so he could investigate a hole police cut in the ceiling.
“Vin could see the suspect and was ‘barking and holding’,” she said. “They warned the guy to come out on his own but he wouldn’t, so Rick issued the command and sent Vin to bite the guy.
“Vin bit the suspect and there was a bit of a scuffle,” Cuevas said. Foster, she said, accompanied the suspect to Santa Clara Valley Medical Center for treatment.
The search and attack-trained, 7-year-old dog, who was trained in Germany for discipline, is from a long line of police dogs, Cuevas said.
“He knows exactly what he’s doing,” she said. “He has 10 legitimate bites under his collar – bites in the line of duty.”
Cuevas said Vin is a great pet when off duty and good with children and adults.
Foster, the other half of the team, has been with the San Jose Police since 1998.
San Jose Police Chief William Lansdowne said Monday morning that the man, who was not carrying identification, was related to a schoolmate of the kidnapped child. Police went to the house with a search warrant, having been led there by a description from Jennette Landsdowne said the man resembled the police sketch of the abductor.
The arrest came at the end of three frantic days of police activity where police all over the Bay Area searched for the girl. The kidnapper severely beat the girl’s mother, Roselia, and 12-year-old brother when they discovered him in the house, then escaped with the girl in his car.
A security camera mounted on the garage of a neighbor’s house caught the suspect’s car on tape as it arrived and left. Police said the tape gave them valuable clues.
By Sunday morning the search for the child had extended into South County.
Four Sheriff’s Office deputies searched the small pond area and fields near Riverside Golf Course on Monterey Road north of Morgan Hill, according to Public Information Officer Terrence Helm. The area is within the 25-mile radius of her south San Jose home that authorities said represented the most likely area to find her.
Over the weekend deputies handed out flyers with pictures of the missing child and her suspected abductor up and down Monterey Road in Morgan Hill and in Gilroy which was also searched.
Police officials said they suspected the kidnapper knew the family because he told the child’s mother, “you know what I want” more than once.
Police also said the child’s father, Pablo Velasquez, and her stepfather are not suspected of taking part in the crime.
The state-wide system of notification known as Amber Alert, was implemented Friday though did not extend to freeway notice signs because a license plate and exact description of the car were not available. Still, between the broad coverage such events receive from round-the-clock news coverage, better coordination between police departments and the public’s willingness to get involved, police say the alerts appear to have worked to save children.
“We hope it’s a deterrent,” Tom Marshall, spokesman for the California Highway Patrol, said of Amber Alerts. “But if it makes them think, ’I better not harm this kid. I better drop her somewhere and get out of here,’ we don’t care as long as we get the kid back.”
Amber Alerts went into effect in July 2002, sponsored by Gov. Gray Davis and former Assemblyman George Runner, R-Lancaster. When a child goes missing, details are immediately broadcast on television, radio and on freeway signs. The alerts first appeared in 1996 in Texas and were called “Amber” after 9-year-old Amber Hagerman, who was kidnapped from her Arlington, Texas home and murdered.
“There’s a clear description of him, his car and the child and they basically panic,” Runner said. “They know they have to flee and it’s going to be harder to do that with the child.”
Staff Writer Marilyn Dubil contributed to this story
