Parents `So Happy' To Have Girl Back -- 6-Year-Old Abducted From Bowling Alley

EVERETT - Children are told to watch out for strangers from the schoolyard to the mall. Add the neighborhood bowling alley to the list.

Bowlers at the Tyee Lanes in Everett yesterday were not just contemplating strikes and spares, but also the kidnapping and apparent molestation of a 6-year-old girl from the lanes Monday night.

The Everett girl was playing video games while her parents bowled when she disappeared out a back door just after 10 p.m., Tyee Lanes owner Gordy Cea said yesterday. Three hours later, a resident found her wandering along the Mountain Loop Highway near Granite Falls, about 28 miles away.

Police spokesman Mark Sigfrinius would release very little information about the case yesterday, saying all available detectives had been assigned to it and might be close to an arrest. He would not reveal whether the girl was molested or otherwise injured, only that she was treated and released from Providence Hospital in Everett, which has a sexual-assault unit.

But Cea said the girl's father, a bowler in the Monday night Wildcats League at the alley, 914 N. Broadway, told him yesterday she had been molested in some way but was doing "as well as could be expected."

"She told him something to the effect that `the bad man dropped me off in his car in the woods in the middle of nowhere,' " Cea said. " `Then the nice man picked me up and took me to the police station.' "

"They're just so happy to have her back."

The incident appeared to be a textbook case of "never take an eye off your kids." Security cameras recorded the girl's movements at the video games up until 10 minutes before her mother came looking for her, Cea said. Even then, she was only steps from where her parents were bowling.

The girl is last seen wandering around a corner near the back door, past the camera's eye. That's where her mother found her shoes and coat minutes later.

Cea said he reviewed hours of camera tape in hopes of seeing something unusual but recognized most people as regular customers.

"I think everybody's watching their kids a little closer today," said Jerry Goforth of Marysville, a regular who said he searched for the girl for two hours before going home around midnight.

Tracie Cram, 11, stuck close to her father and cousins at the lanes yesterday but said she wasn't scared to be there.

"It's hard to believe you could be out bowling and have to worry about your kids," said her father, Terry Cram, who used to bowl at the alley in the '60s. "I'm glad we live in Wyoming."

The lanes are less than a block from the Everett Community College campus, where female students have reported three incidents in which they were confronted by a man masturbating in women's restrooms at the student-union building.

Police have not said if the cases are believed to be related.