Oregon Girl, 7, Feared Abducted By Stranger Man In 30s Reportedly Snatched Her While She Sat With A Friend

A 7-year-old girl was abducted by a man in a red pickup as she sat with a friend on the grass near a busy corner, less than a block from home, Hermiston police said.

Brittany Arterburn and a friend were sitting together about 8 p.m. Tuesday when a man drove up, jumped out of the truck, grabbed the girl and drove off, said Officer Doug Smith.

The friend ran and told Arterburn’s grandmother, who called police.

Arterburn did not appear to know the man, and investigators do not suspect the man was related to the girl, Smith said.

The pickup driver is described as a white man in his 30s with blondish, gray hair and a blond mustache. He was wearing overalls. The truck had silver or gold stripes on the side and a black roll bar.

Police said the girl is 3-feet-6, weighs about 65 pounds, has long black hair, dark eyes and a dark complexion. She was wearing a white blouse with daisies around the collar, white shorts and a yellow and white headband.

A $100,000 reward has been offered by private individuals for information leading to an arrest, said Brian Frutchey, a Hermiston insurance salesman who helped organize a group of citizens to search for the girl.

“Right now there’s probably a hundred people working on this,” Frutchey said. “We’re frantic.”

Police Sgt. Michael Marcum said that officers interviewed people in the neighborhood where the abduction took place.

“We drove all the back roads and checked the hiding spots that we know about,” Marcum said. “Now we’ve scaled it back and a couple officers are covering leads.”

Officers have been in contact with the girl’s mother, who lives in Hermiston and the father, who lives in Gervais.