Kidnaping Story Found to Be False

A man falsely reported Thursday that his son had been kidnaped while sleeping in his pickup truck so that Pomona police would look for the truck, which had been stolen, authorities said.

The boy, Paul Wenko, 4, was found asleep at his grandmother’s Alhambra home and the man who said he was his father--but was actually the boy’s uncle--was booked on suspicion of filing a false report, Sgt. Gary Elofson said.

Gary Yonko, 24, called police about 4 a.m. to report that he had left his son in the truck while he was unloading it at the family’s home in Pomona and returned to find both the boy and the truck gone.

“He just wanted us to look for his truck faster,” Elofson said. “We’re not looking for it quite as hard now. It just goes into the computer and becomes another stolen truck, like hundreds of thousand of others this month in California.”