Hucknall woman left shaken after attempted child-snatch fright

Megan O’Reilly said she was walking along George Street with three of her four children when the incident happened.

She said: “I was walking my children back from nursery when we saw these three males in a group, so I told the children to hold on to the pushchair.

"As we walked past, one of them grabbed my son’s arm, my son screamed and I shouted ‘what do you think you’re doing’.

"One of them shouted something that wasn’t in English and they all ran off in different directions.

"This happened just round from where we live.

"I called the police straight away, a policeman came out, offered us victim support, gave us an incident number and said it was very concerning.

"He then went knocking door to door.”

Social media has been ablaze in the last couple of weeks with posts from concerned adults raising the alarm over alleged attempted abductions.

One Hucknall school even posted a text to out to parents of all its pupils, warning them to be on their guard.

Megan said she has seen other posts about potential abduction attempts on Facebook but added she didn’t know whether they had been reported to the police or not.

However, she was still concerned that that police did not, in her eyes, seem to be taking the threat seriously enough.

She continued: “The policeman who came to see me said he hadn’t seen these other posts on Facebook and I don’t know if those people reported them.

"But I know I reported mine and they gave me an incident number,

"I think it’s quite disturbing that the police aren’t taking this more seriously.

“If a kid does get taken now, it will be on them.”

Megan has now taken action to ensure something like this doesn’t happen again, including taking different walking routes and having her mum come to her door to take the children to school and nursery, so she is not alone outside with them.

She said: “I’ve emailed (Hucknall MP) Mark Spencer about this and I’ve passed on the incident number to my child’s school.

"I just want the police not to take this lightly and do something before a child does get taken.”

Earlier this week, police said they had not received any reports of child abduction attempts in the area and urged people to stay calm and not panic.

And police again confirmed they had investigated this incident but concluded that no crime had been committed.

A Nottinghamshire Police spokesman said: “We received a third-party report of an incident in George Street, Hucknall, on Wednesday, June 9, 2021.

“The incident has been thoroughly investigated and following our enquiries it was found that no attempted offence had been committed as described by the caller.”