Grandmother recounts close encounter with suspect in Charlotte Sena kidnapping
When New York State Police investigators came to her home this week and showed her a photo of the 46-year-old suspect in the abduction of 9-year-old Charlotte Sena, Carol Brown said she almost "fell out of my chair."
The Ballston Spa, New York, woman who lives down the road from a home where kidnapping suspect Craig N. Ross Jr. was arrested in a camper and where Charlotte was rescued on Monday, said she recognized the photo right away as a stranger she caught in her front yard a few months ago, just inches from her 9-year-old grandson.
Brown told ABC News on Wednesday that she had no idea who Ross was until state police investigators knocked on her door asking if she had noticed "anything unusual happen" recently in her Saratoga County neighborhood.
"The police asked me, 'Would you mind looking at pictures and seeing if you recognize anybody?' And I said, 'Absolutely,'" Brown recalled. "I was sitting at my dining room table and when the picture came out of him, I literally almost got sick to my stomach, fell off my chair almost."
Brown said she told investigators she was "100% sure" a man in one of the photos the investigators showed her is "the exact same man that I had approached right here on the front lawn with my grandson inches away."
She said the encounter occurred a few months ago while her grandson was in her front yard operating a weed whacker. She recalled being along the side of her home and hearing her dog barking.
Brown said she walked around the corner of her garage and saw the stranger speaking to her grandson.
"I walk up. I literally lose my breath because I'm like, where did this person come from? There's this man standing with his back to me right over him [her grandson]," Brown told ABC News. "I yelled, 'Hey what's going on?"
She said the stranger turned toward her and started backpedaling away, claiming he was asking the boy if he could come with him and help him operate his new weed trimmer. She said that as she walked toward the man yelling, "No, no, no!" The stranger walked away, got on a bicycle and took off, she said.
"It was very, very rattling," Brown said of the encounter.
She said she did not report it to be police at the time but now wishes she had and shutters to think what might have happened to her grandson if she hadn't gone to check on why her dog was barking.
"I can't stop thinking about it," Brown said. "If my dog didn't bark ... I might have gotten busy in the backyard, I might have picked up some flowers, I might have done anything other than come right back out."
Brown added, "In hindsight, I wish there were a million things I did differently. I wish I had my camera, my cellphone. I wish I took a picture of him. I wish I followed him in my car maybe until I got the police to help. I wish I did a lot of things."
State police officials said they are continuing to investigate Ross to determine if he was involved in any other crimes.
"New York State Police will not confirm, deny, or provide any information concerning investigations that did not result in criminal prosecution," a state police spokesperson told ABC News. "We have no history of arresting Craig N. Ross Jr. for any sexual-related crimes."
Charlotte Sena was abducted on Saturday while camping with her family and friends at Moreau Lake State Park in Saratoga County, according to police. She disappeared around dinnertime on Saturday, while riding her bike in the campground alone.
Following an intense 48-hour search of the sprawling park involving 400 local, state and federal law enforcement officers and firefighters, police arrested Ross and found Charlotte alive and in good condition, hidden in a small cabinet-size closet of a camper the suspect was staying in behind his mother's home in Ballston Spa.
The big break in the case came after Ross allegedly left a ransom note early Monday morning in the mailbox of the Sena family's Saratoga County home. The note, according to police, contained a fingerprint investigators managed to match to a 1999 DWI arrest of Ross in the city of Saratoga.
Ross has been charged with first-degree kidnapping and is being held without bail at the Saratoga County Correctional Facility. His next court date is scheduled for Oct. 17.
