Kidnaped Boy Released After Helping With Negotiations

An 8-year-old boy who was grabbed from a Placentia school playground and held hostage by a woman with a gun Wednesday calmly negotiated his own release before police took the woman into custody, authorities said.

“The boy was pretty cool throughout the whole ordeal,” Placentia Police Lt. Daryll Thomann said. “He was the negotiator.”

The incident began about 12:15 p.m. when a woman, identified as Sheila Faye Reed, 30, of Yorba Linda, allegedly walked on to the Van Buren Elementary School playground and grabbed the boy, who was playing ball with another student, Thomann said.

Reed apparently dragged the 4th-grader to a bench at Carlsbad Park, adjacent to the school, Thomann said. A school teacher saw the boy being kidnaped and called police, he said.

Police said the woman did not know the boy.

When police arrived, they found the suspect sitting on the park bench with the boy and pointing a .22 caliber semi-automatic handgun at the child’s head. “She threatened to shoot him,” Thomann said.

The suspect communicated with police through the boy, having him yell information to the officers instead of talking to them directly.

After about 20 minutes of negotiations, the suspect agreed to release the boy if a nearby officer gave his shotgun to her, Thomann said.

“We said we couldn’t do that,” the lieutenant said. “That’s when the boy suggested (on his own) that the officer drop the shotgun where he was standing and walk away.”

The suspect agreed to the suggestion and the officer dropped the gun, he said. At that point, the suspect freed the boy, who ran and jumped into the arms of an officer.

Fifteen minutes later police talked the suspect into throwing down her weapon, Thomann said.

Reed was arrested on suspicion of kidnaping and taken to Orange County Jail.