Money Real, but Boys’ Kidnapping Story Bogus

While family members, bloodhounds and a police helicopter crew scoured the neighborhood for a 10-year-old boy and his 4-year-old brother, missing for nearly 14 hours, the youngsters apparently were shopping, playing video games and munching hamburgers and pizza.

The two bankrolled their expedition with $12,800 belonging to a relative and their mother, police said Friday.

Family members feared the worst when Tuan Nguyen, 10, and Tony, 4, disappeared from their Midway City home about 11 a.m. Wednesday. An uncle who had been looking after them went to a nearby food store and returned 30 minutes later to find the doors of the house locked and the boys gone.

“When the uncle went to the store, they seized the moment, seized the cash and went and bought some comic books and action figures before having lunch at a McDonald’s restaurant,” Sheriff’s Lt. Ron Wilkerson said Friday.

Afterward, the boys went to the Family Fun Center on Warner Avenue in Fountain Valley, where they played video games, bought pizza and “lost track of time,” Wilkerson said.

When the center closed at midnight, an employee called police after noticing that the boys were still there and that no adults were in sight, Wilkerson said.

Officers returned the boys to their home early Thursday morning and impounded the money, which the brothers had stuffed in a backpack.

Wilkerson said the boys were interviewed separately for about two hours Friday, and detectives were able to discount the tale that the two had first told family members: that they had been kidnapped by a man.

“The boys’ rendition of the story was contrived. . . . There were some obvious inconsistencies in what each of the boys said separately,” Wilkerson said. “There was no abduction.”

Wilkerson said $800 of the cash belonged to the boys’ mother and $12,000 to her cousin. It was not clear where such a large sum of cash came from, Wilkerson said.

“We’re just told that it belongs to someone else in the family,” Wilkerson said, “a cousin who didn’t live in the home.”

Police returned the money to the family, minus what the youngsters spent on their adventure.

At the family’s home Friday, relatives said the brothers and their mother were away for the day. “She doesn’t want to talk about it because she doesn’t want them to get into any more trouble,” a friend of the family said.