Kidnapping Charge For Man Accused Of Grabbing Boy
SEATTLE — A 65-year-old Seattle man accused of trying to walk off with a 5-year-old California boy visiting Pike Place Market with his family has been charged with second-degree kidnapping.
King County prosecutors charged Robert Paul Steiner Jr. on Wednesday. He is held on $250,000 bail.
According to court papers, the boy vanished Monday when his parents looked away briefly to dislodge a rock from his mother’s walking cast. They began to search immediately and his mother glimpsed him walking hand in hand with a strange man. She screamed, the man dropped the boy’s hand and the child began running back to his mother.
Police say Steiner told them the boy grabbed his hand as he was walking by.
