El Dorado deputies deny they failed to take a reported child abduction seriously

The El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office reassured the public in a vaguely worded Facebook post Sunday that it was investigating a report regarding a child in Shingle Springs, a day after a resident claimed deputies had responded dismissively to her call about her son’s having been “abducted.”

A Facebook user, Brittany Moreno, said in a post Saturday night that her son had been taken from her backyard near Idle Creek and Creekside drives on Friday, his 10th birthday. Her son was returned by another resident about an hour and a half later, Moreno wrote, and reported that someone had dragged him into the woods.

Moreno described the Sheriff’s Office’s response, after she called 911, as “deeply disturbing,” adding that she wanted “to highlight the serious failure of EDSO to protect our son or even take this seriously.”

In a list of complaints included in her Facebook post, she said Sheriff’s Office personnel had questioned the credibility of her son’s story, “did not question the neighbor who returned him,” “didn’t check the scene” and “refused” to collect a sample of her son’s DNA, which she suggested could help identify a suspect because her son bit his abductor, according to her post.

“We are heartbroken, angry, and scared,” Moreno wrote.

In its own Facebook post, the Sheriff’s Office said detectives were investigating the incident and the agency had updated the original caller — presumably Moreno, although the post included no names — on the investigation. Moreno did not immediately respond to messages from The Sacramento Bee.

“From the initial call, Deputies from the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office immediately responded and utilized the various investigative tools available that were appropriate at that time,” the Sheriff’s Office post said.

Sgt. Kyle Parker, a spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Office, declined in a phone interview to address Moreno’s specific claims about the agency’s handling of her report. The Sheriff’s Office post was designed to affirm — contrary to Moreno’s criticism, which by Monday had garnered over 80 comments — that “we take all calls for service seriously,” Parker said.

“Because of the amount of traffic that this had,” he said, “we just wanted to assure the community that we were investigating this.”

Moreno’s post also warned that the person who allegedly took her son could remain a threat. The Sheriff’s Office said Sunday there was “not an identifiable threat to public safety.”

The Bee’s Jack Rodriquez-Vars contributed to this story.