School-age children foils kidnapping attempt on their classmate

ByGemma Iso

March 22, 2023

Jamaal Germany, 30 years old’s kidnapping attempt on one of the students at a school bus stop in Gaithersburg, Maryland was foiled after school-age children came to the defense of the classmate.

“The victim stated that they were standing at the bus stop in the 17600 block of Towne Crest Dr., at approximately 7:20 a.m., when the suspect allegedly grabbed the child and pulled them toward an apartment building,” read a statement from the Montgomery County Police Department following the kidnapping attempt. “Several students who were standing at the bus stop attempted to intervene and the victim was able to break free.”

The Kidnapping Attempt

The suspect’s motives have not been established yet as authorities continue to investigate the incident.

Authorities say that when the school bus arrived, all the students were accounted for and boarded the bus before the incident was reported to school staff. A community engagement officer also responded to the children’s school approximately 30 minutes after the attempted kidnapping incident was reported.

Detectives from the Special Victims Investigation Division are asking for anyone who believes that they may have been a victim of Germany to call 240-773-5400.

In January this year, a man tried to kidnap a 9-year-old boy from a Brooklyn synagogue but was thwarted when the kid’s mother emerged and saw him trying to carry her son away.

The boy was attending a bris for a family member at the Hesed Le Avraham Synagogue on East 7th Street in Gravesend shortly after 9 a.m. when a man who had been praying inside approached him.

The stranger asked the child to go outside with him — and when the kid refused, he picked him up by the shoulders and tried to carry him out through the front door, according to police’s report on the kidnapping attempt.