Girls 12 and 13 Take Van, Other Kids for Joy Ride

Two young sisters commandeered a van loaded with four other foster children and went for a joy ride around San Diego County until they were caught in Encinitas Tuesday, 18 hours after the episode began.

San Diego police, who began looking for the missing van Monday, said they may ask that stolen-vehicle charges be filed against the two girls, ages 12 and 13, who drove off with the van while their foster parents were briefly inside a San Diego medical clinic.

Without putting a dent in the van, the sisters wheeled from San Diego to their hometown of Vista in the northern part of the county, a trip of about 30 miles. The four other children--an 8-month-old boy and three sisters ages 12, 4 and 18 months--simply had to sit back and take part in the ride, police said.

The six spent the night in the van, apparently in Encinitas, before they were snagged by a sheriff’s deputy patrolling the coastal city Tuesday morning.

‘A Little Embarrassed’

“They were all fine, but the older girls were a little embarrassed,” said Deputy Leah Mitchell, who captured the children.

San Diego police Detective Ron Larmour said the incident appeared to be a “spur of the moment thing” hatched by the two sisters, who had been under the supervision of foster parents for only about two weeks. Larmour said the pair may have decided to escape in the van because they were chafing at the more restrictive life style under their foster parents, who were not identified.

The incident began at about 3:30 p.m. Monday outside a Kaiser medical clinic in the Clairemont Mesa area of San Diego, where the foster family had gone for checkups.

Larmour said the two sisters apparently convinced the foster mother that her husband needed her inside the clinic, and the woman rushed off without removing the keys from the van’s ignition.

All-Points Bulletin

The girls then set off down the road with the four other children in tow. When the foster parents returned to find the van gone, they called police, who put out an all-points bulletin for law enforcement agencies throughout the county to be on the lookout for the vehicle.

In the meantime, the two sisters managed to pilot the van along streets and freeways to their old neighborhood in Vista, then veered back toward the coast, where they spent the night.

Sheriff’s deputies in Encinitas were alerted to the van’s whereabouts Tuesday by a neighbor who heard a radio broadcast about the missing children and realized her son had been talking to the young girls as they paused near the family’s home the night before.

Deputy Mitchell said she saw the vehicle motoring slowly along a residential street in Encinitas at about 9:30 a.m. and managed to box the youngsters in when they pulled into a dead-end street leading into a condominium complex.

Fed Sandwiches and Bananas

The children were held for several hours at the Encinitas sheriff’s substation, where they were fed sandwiches and bananas by Mitchell and other deputies. By 11 a.m., San Diego police had arrived and questioned the two older girls, who were subsequently released to their natural parents in Vista.

Larmour said the two sisters had been placed in the care of foster parents on a temporary basis because of problems at home.

Such placements are sometimes made to give children and parents a “vacation period,” during which they can better work out problems, the detective said, declining to go into further detail because of confidentiality requirements with cases involving juveniles.

The four other children were taken to the Hillcrest Receiving Home in San Diego, a county facility for homeless and abused children. Police would not speculate on when or if the children would be returned to the foster parents.