Man Sought in Attempted Kidnaping of 8-Year-Old : Crime: A Costa Mesa girl who says the suspect tried to abduct her reported seeing 3 other girls in his car.

Police and school officials are worried that three girls may be in the hands of a man whose attempt to kidnap an 8-year-old Costa Mesa girl Wednesday morning was foiled.

Police issued an all-points bulletin for a blue car with out-of-state license plates after the would-be abductor was scared off by students from Wilson Elementary School, Costa Mesa Police Sgt. Mike Millington said.

He drove off with three girls in the car, none of whom the victim recognized, Millington said.

“Their status is really not known,” he said. “We don’t know if they were in the (car) voluntarily or involuntarily. There’s no real evidence to indicate one way or another.”

Millington said that the 8-year-old, a student at the grade school, was walking along West Wilson Street about a block from the campus when a late-model, two-door compact pulled up to the curb alongside her at 7:45 a.m.

A stranger jumped out of the idling car, Millington said, and walked up to the girl.

Without saying a word, “he grabs the victim by her hands and pulls the victim towards the car,” Millington said.

Luckily, Millington said, three other Wilson students were walking behind the victim and started screaming when they saw what was happening. Frightened, the man jumped back into his car and sped off. The girl was not injured.

Those three students, also girls, left the scene and have not come forward to provide information, Millington said.

“We sure want to talk to them,” he said.

The victim, who was not identified, ran to the school and reported the incident, Millington said. She was interviewed by police detectives and provided a detailed description of her attacker.

During the interview in the principal’s office, the victim told police that she noticed three other school-age girls sitting in the back seat of the car, Millington said. It did not immediately appear that they were being held against their will.

While police issued an all-points bulletin and checked for reports of other missing children from the area, school officials took attendance and contacted other school districts for reports of missing children.

Thomas Godley, assistant superintendent for the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, said that so far, there are no other reports of missing children.

Wednesday’s incident also prompted school officials to draft a letter to parents in all of the district’s grade schools, detailing what happened at Wilson Elementary and how to protect their children from similar incidents.

“We (also) spoke to each of the classrooms on how to behave in this situation,” school Principal Sandy Bundy said.

Bundy said that the school has beefed up security by posting administrators and teachers outside the school grounds an hour before and after school. She added that the attempted kidnaping was the first such incident to occur at the school.

Meanwhile, parents expressed fear that a kidnaper is on the loose and may be targeting children in the area.

“I’m very worried,” said Juana Leon as she read the school flyer. “That’s why I always come to pick my children up.”

Leon, who lives a block from the school, said that for the past four years, she has religiously picked up her son Ismael, 10, and daughter Evelyn, 8.

Another mother, who found out about the attempted kidnaping Wednesday afternoon, panicked when she didn’t find her 9-year-old daughter waiting for her.

“We didn’t establish that I would pick her up today,” the mother said before rushing home to check if her daughter had taken the bus home. “Now I’m a basket case.”

Children, meanwhile, were shaken by the news, which spread throughout the Newport-Mesa district. Many of them memorized the attacker’s description provided on the flyers.

“We were all like thrown back,” said 9-year-old Drew Boortz, a student at Harbor View Elementary School, who carried a flyer about the incident to a Cub Scout outing off campus. “We didn’t know what to do.”

A friend, Rand Goldie, 11, said that there had been a similar scare last year, when a man was approaching children and offering them free puppies if they got into his car.

“Nobody listened to him,” he said.

Bundy said that the children are instructed each year about safety.

“We tell them not to speak to strangers,” she said. “If a car pulls up and approaches them in any way, (we tell them to) just run away in the opposite direction and report (it) to a responsible adult.”

Police described the man as about 40 years old, 5-foot-10, 180 pounds, with short brown hair and a mustache. He wore wire-rim glasses, a short-sleeve gray shirt and blue denims.

The man also had a distinctive red and green rose tattoo on the back of his left hand, Millington said. The girl also told investigators that the license plate on his car appeared to be issued from another state. The plate was white with blue lettering and the number began with a 2.

Cassy Tindall, a spokeswoman for the Orange County branch of the Adam Walsh Foundation, said that no young girls in Orange County have been reported missing recently. But, she added, the organization was checking its national center to see if that man’s description links him to other kidnapings or attempts.

She said that the children in the car could have been the man’s children or could have known him.

“A ploy that they sometimes use is to use other kids like their own” during a kidnaping, Tindall said. “Somehow it seems less threatening to the child.”

Anyone with information that may lead authorities to the man is urged to call the Costa Mesa Police Department at (714) 754-5255, Millington said.

Times staff writer Lily Dizon contributed to this report.