Suspect in Girl’s Kidnaping Surrenders

A suspect in the kidnaping of a 9-year-old Hayward girl turned himself in and was detained for questioning Thursday, San Francisco police said.

Steven Shane, 21, turned himself in at the Mission Station about 1:45 a.m. and was taken to the Hall of Justice, where he was being held on an outstanding warrant.

Detectives from Hayward planned to interview Shane today.

Shane, a convicted felon, resembles the composite drawing of a man who forced Michaela Joy Garecht into his car last Saturday outside a Hayward grocery store.

Police said that Shane was only one of numerous suspects. He was arrested on a parole violation and not as a direct suspect in the kidnaping. He has no record of sex crimes or crimes against children.

He was convicted in Fremont of narcotics violations and theft in February, 1986, and of assault with a deadly weapon in 1987. He was paroled on March, 1988, and arrested on suspicion of burglary the following month. That charge was dropped but Shane was sent back to prison until recently for a parole violation.

Shane’s last known address was a residential hotel in San Francisco, but he previously had lived in Hayward near where the kidnaping occurred.

While Shane was being detained, Garecht’s family spent an anxious Thanksgiving holiday waiting for news of the missing girl. Police and the FBI have received hundreds of tips but so far have been frustrated in their efforts to find either the girl or her abductor.