2 November 2009 / TODAY’S ZAMAN WITH WIRES, İSTANBUL
The Kayseri Police now have more reason to believe that three children who went missing while touring their neighborhood to collect holiday candy on the second day of the Ramadan holiday in late September were kidnapped, as a kidnapping incident was prevented in the city on Saturday.
According to reports, two individuals attempted to lure 3-year-old Ramazan Kepir, who was playing outside of his home, by offering the child some candy. The child’s grandmother, Navruz Avcı (55), who came out the house, saw one of the two individuals hand him the candy. According to the grandmother’s account, the suspects, driving a dark BMW whose license plate she said she could not make out, fled the scene in their car when she yelled out her grandson’s name. The woman, who spoke to reporters after testifying to the police, said the two fled the scene so fast that, had there been a person in front of their car, they would have knocked him down.Officers now say the incident gives them stronger reason to believe that the three Kayseri children -- Dilruba (7) and Ahmet Tuna Tekin (8) and Özlem Ay (11), who haven’t been heard from since they left their homes in the central Talas district of Kayseri 41 days ago -- were kidnapped, possibly by the same gang that attempted to kidnap Kepir. Kayseri police have been searching for the children since the day they were reported missing. All officers were immediately called back to work on the case, and no leave has been approved since. The police searched every building and spoke to nearly every person in the area during the investigation, searching the neighborhood from riverbeds to basements and the interiors of abandoned buildings in the area, but the search so far hadn’t yielded any clues until the attempted kidnapping of Kepir.
