Possible Sighting of Daughter Brings Florida Parents to L.A.

The parents of a kidnaped 6-year-old Orlando, Fla., girl were in Los Angeles Monday to ask for public help after reports that a frightened child resembling their daughter had been seen in the harbor area with an unidentified man.

Bob and Donna Armstrong flew to Los Angeles when they learned of several recent sightings of a girl resembling their daughter, Regina, who was taken by a man while she was playing with her 9-year-old sister in front of their home on June 18.

“We are very hopeful,” the mother said at Harbor Division police station. “We still think she is alive.”

A Gardena bus passenger reportedly told police that he saw a man in his late 30s disembarking with a girl at Western Avenue and Pacific Coast Highway in Harbor City last Thursday. He reportedly said the man held the girl tightly and that she seemed afraid of him.

The witness called a missing children hot line after seeing Regina Armstrong’s picture on a television news show Friday night.

Harbor Division Lt. Mike Markulis said the similarities between the girl sighted here and Regina Armstrong were sufficient to prompt an intensive search by police and sheriff’s deputies of the area bounded by Western and Normandie avenues and by Pacific Coast Highway and Carson Boulevard.

Officers were showing residents a photograph of the kidnaped girl, described as 3 feet, 5 inches tall with long, sandy-brown hair and bangs. She has a gap between two of her upper front teeth. Police were also showing a composite drawing of the man believed to have seized her in Orlando.

Police said there are differences between the Orlando suspect and the man seen here.

“Basically,” Detective John Woodrum said, “we’re concerned about that little girl (on the bus), no matter who she is.”