Top 5 lures used by dangerous predators

National Center for Missing and Exploited Children compiled list

It's Project 4: Missing Children, a day Channel 4 is dedicating to protecting your family and finding missing kids from our area.  We want to give parents and children the tactics dangerous predators have used to lure kids to go with them.

Following the abduction and murder of Cherish Perrywinkle last month, Channel 4 spent time at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in South Florida.  With all the information the center has gathered over the years, and will all the children they've helped find, we wanted to know just how abducted kids were lured away.

The center says of the incidents in which the suspect used a known lure, the five most utilized lures were:

  • Offering the child a ride
  • Offering the child candy/sweets
  • Asking the child questions
  • Offering the child money
  • Using an animal (offering, looking for, or showing)
  • According to government statistics, in 80 percent of abductions by strangers, the first contact between the child and the abductor occurs within a quarter mile of the child's home.