PORT TOWNSEND — It’s not a good time to own a white van or drive one if you are a middle-aged man.
People from Port Townsend to Port Angeles have reported seeing a white van driven by a man since reports that a middle-aged man approached two children in Port Townsend last month.
Sightings of white vans have either not been confirmed or found to be unrelated.
None of the reports of spotting a white van at various places on the North Olympic Peninsula have led to finding the man who attempted to get two children, in separate instances, into his van, said Port Townsend and Sequim police department representatives.
“There is nothing new to report,” said Officer Luke Bogues, spokesman for the Port Townsend Police Department.
“It remains an open case.”
A recent report, a Facebook post Tuesday, said “a middle aged dude with a full sized white van” was spotted a few times around Sequim and that police “won’t/can’t do anything about him until he actually commits a crime.”
Bogues and Sequim Police Chief Bill Dickinson said the report produced no leads.
“The identity of the man in the sketch is not known,” Bogues said.
“Detective Devin McBride devoted nearly the entire month to following up on nothing but the luring reports pursuing a criminal case for attempted luring.”
The department has no suspects right now.
“If the man can be identified, it is the intention of the Police Department to forward a report for criminal charging to the Prosecutor’s Office,” Bogues said.
The Sequim Police Department “has no credible information that the Port Townsend suspect has been in Sequim,” said Dickinson in a Friday email to the Facebook report poster.
A man in a white van was reported to have approached two 11-year-old children on two consecutive Wednesdays as they rode their bicycles to Blue Heron Middle School in Port Townsend last month.
In the Oct. 2 incident, a boy reported that a middle-aged man in a rusty white van offered him candy.
On Oct. 9, a girl reported that a man in a white van told her that her mother wanted him to give her a ride to school.
The boy said no to the candy and went on his way, while the girl asked the man her mother’s name. When he couldn’t tell her, she fled.
No luring attempts have been reported since then.
But white vans have been seen and reported.
Bogues said his department has investigated 200 or more reports but found nothing that could conclusively be linked to the reports of the two children.
“We had a person of interest for a little while,” Bogues said Friday. “We’ve eliminated him.”
Dickinson said Friday that the Sequim Police Department has had “multiple reports about a man who lives in his white van and can be frequently seen around Sequim, but he has been checked out by us and confirmed by Port Townsend police that he is not the man and van they are looking for.
“One of the problems with social media is that it becomes notoriously unreliable due to posting just enough information to be credible but not enough to really be practical and the limited information then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Dickinson said.
In response to the report, he drove around Sequim schools Friday and counted seven white vans parked on various school properties, all belonging to the school district.
Police aren’t the only people getting reports of white vans.
In late October, Helen Haller Elementary School Principal Russ Lodge in Sequim said he had fielded several reports of white vans in the area.
“It seems like people are seeing a lot more white vans these days,” Lodge said then.
“And there are a lot of white vans out there.”
So what does the white van in question look like?
The boy and girl gave slightly different descriptions.
The boy said the van was rusty with no windows.
The girl said it had three windows down the side and two on the back doors but that she couldn’t see through them, perhaps because something was blocking them.
And what does the man look like?
A sketch of the man thought to be involved, gleaned from a police interview with the boy, was published Oct. 18 and distributed to law enforcement throughout the region.
Port Townsend police had said the girl did not think she could identify the man.
The boy described the driver of the white van as being “older” and having scruffy white facial hair, a gauged plug-style earring in his right ear and bad front teeth.
The boy said the man was wearing a blue Oakland A’s baseball cap with green writing, a dirty white T-shirt and dirty blue jeans.
To the girl, the man appeared to be in his 50s. She told police he was wearing a black hooded sweatshirt low over his face and had no visible facial hair and a pierced nose.
The discrepancies are “only to be expected due to their age and the fact that they may be in a state of crisis,” Bogues has said, adding that police feel both child-luring attempts were by the same man.
“There are so many white vans, and we have the two descriptions that are slightly dissimilar,” Bogues added.
“At this point, there is no way we can say that we know who he is.”
Despite their warnings about social media, representatives of both departments encourage people to phone in tips.
Calls in Sequim should be directed to 360-683-7227.
The Port Townsend number is 360-390-8938.
Those seeing a suspicious person or van in the area of children should dial 9-1-1, police have said.
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Jefferson County Editor Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or cbermant@peninsuladailynews.com.