Abducted Boy Barters Calmly for His Release : Crime: Armed woman pulled the 9-year-old off school playground.

A 9-year-old boy was grabbed from a school playground by a woman armed with a gun and held hostage for about 20 minutes Wednesday before he calmly negotiated his own release, authorities said.

Police arrested Sheila Faye Reed, 30, of Yorba Linda, who allegedly walked onto the grounds of Van Buren Elementary School and abducted David Christie as he played catch with a friend.

School officials acted quickly to corral the other children to another part of the school, and police negotiators tried to talk her into giving up the boy. But finally, it was the words of her young captive that brought the drama to a close.

“I told her at the end if she would let me go, I’d tell the (policeman) to put down his weapon, and so she did,” David recounted in an interview at his home several hours after the incident. “I did it because I just didn’t want to be there. I wanted to get out.”

The officer put down his gun, and David ran into the arms of police, Placentia Police Lt. Daryll Thomann said. The boy’s composure, say those involved in the matter, helped keep the situation from turning into a tragedy.

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

Reed, who works part time at Disneyland, was arrested on suspicion of kidnaping and was being held at Orange County Jail on Wednesday, police said. She was armed with a loaded .22-caliber semiautomatic, police said.

The woman allegedly abducted David about 12:15 p.m., just as the lunch period was ending, Principal Kenneth Lorge said. David and a friend were tossing a baseball back and forth on their way to class when, “the lady grabbed me by the hand,” David said.

“She said, ‘We’re gonna go home now,’ and I said, ‘No, no, no!’ but I didn’t scream,” David said, recalling his afternoon’s adventure as a couple of wide-eyed neighborhood children listened in rapt attention. “Then my principal came and he told everybody to go somewhere, and then the police came.”

David said he decided not to try to fight the woman or run from her.

“Because if I tried to grab the gun, she probably had a good grip on the gun and probably she would shoot me. So I didn’t want that to happen,” he said.

Reed apparently dragged the third-grader to a bench at Carlsbad Park, which is next to the school. A school supervisor spotted them and asked the woman what she was doing. Someone ran to tell the principal, and someone else called police.

“I asked her why she took me, and she said because she needed help for something,” David said. “She didn’t say for what. I felt nervous and scared.”

Reed communicated with police through the boy, Thomann said, having him yell information to the officers instead of talking to them directly.

“She told one policeman, ‘Put down your weapon and come here,’ ” David said. “And the police said, ‘We’re not allowed to do that.’ ”

That’s when David said it dawned on him to suggest a swap--his safe return if the officer put his gun down. Reed agreed and David was released.

Fifteen minutes later, Thomann said, police talked her into throwing down her weapon. She tried to flee, he said, but officers tackled and handcuffed her.

When school officials called David’s mother, Gretchen, at home, she said she insisted that they tell her what was wrong.

“They said: ‘Get somebody to drive you here. Your son’s been held hostage,’ ” she said, her eyes misting as she told the story.

“I’m real proud of him. Everybody said he was real brave,” she said. “All reports I got about him were real good.”

David said he will never know why she chose to take him, other than perhaps because he was closest to her on the playground. But, he said, he will remember this:

“She was nice enough to let me go,” he said.

Staff writers Davan Maharaj and Matt Lait contributed to this report.