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Deputies Question Man Who Picked Up Girl

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BY NEIL JOHNSON AND JEFF SCULLIN

The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 29, 2009

Updated: 03/29/2009 10:07 pm

An Amber Alert has been canceled for a 12-year-old Bradenton girl that left her house Saturday.

Sarah Norton is home and apparently unharmed, her grandmother, Carol Claar, said Sunday afternoon. Investigators are debriefing the girl about where she was in the last 20 hours, Claar said.

Relatives feared the worst. About 4:30 p.m. Sunday, Sarah called her family and said she was at a Sarasota mall. She didn't say exactly where she was or the name of the mall before hanging up the phone.

"Then 10 minutes later she walked through the door, laughing and strutting like she had a night on the town," Claar said. "But she's home and she's safe. We laughed and we cried, and we had a big group hug."

Neighbors told Claar they had seen two people drop Sarah off at the family's home Sunday afternoon.

Earlier Sunday afternoon, the state issued an Amber Alert for Sarah, who was seen getting into a Jeep Cherokee Saturday morning.

Detectives have found the person who was with Sarah, sheriff's spokeswoman Dave Bristow said in a written statement Sunday night. The man is being questioned by investigators and charges are pending, Bristow said.

Sarah ran out of her house in west Bradenton wearing a gray sports bra and denim shorts after arguing with her grandmother. The 5-foot-3 sixth-grader was so upset that she didn't even stop to put on her shoes.

About 10:30 a.m., witnesses saw her get into a newer model red Cherokee with Florida tags on West Manatee Avenue, according to the Manatee County Sheriff's Office. A man between 45 and 50 was driving, the sheriff's office said.

Before Sarah returned home safely, Claar said that whoever took her was a stranger because the family has only been in Bradenton since November and Sarah knows no one in the area.

"I knew someone had taken her, in my mind," Claar said. "There was no place for her to go, and if she was on Manatee Avenue looking like that, somebody would have picked her up, and it might not have been someone who had kindness in their hearts."

When Sarah left the home she shares with her grandparents, mother and two siblings, she was "angry and hurt," her grandmother said. Claar said she had taken a lighter away from Sarah because she was afraid she might have hurt herself with it.

The fight came after a sleepless night for both of them. Sarah, who takes medication to control her anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and to help her sleep, had missed a needed pill, Claar said. Sarah was restless and agitated, and the two spent the night talking and telling stories.

Sarah often takes walks around the block to help relieve stress. She took three Saturday morning.

"She had been up all night and she just couldn't get rid of her energy," Claar said.

Each time, Sarah was gone for about 30 minutes. After tearing out of the house and being gone for an hour and a half, her grandmother knew something was wrong.

A neighbor reported having seen Sarah squeezing through a hole in the backyard fence and then running barefoot toward Manatee Avenue, one of Bradenton's main drags.

That's unlike Sarah, who never goes that far on her daily walks, Claar said.

Tribune reporter Ray Reyes and News Channel 8 reporter Natalie Shepherd contributed to this report.

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