Police say no evidence of kidnapping near Dorchester school

By Brian R. Ballou and John R. Ellement, Globe Staff

Three elementary school children triggered a major investigation today when they reported that, while walking home from their Dorchester school, they may have witnessed someone kidnapped and stuffed into a black plastic bag.

A police spokesman said tonight, however, that officers have determined a kidnapping probably did not occur and police have reduced the manpower working on the investigation.

Earlier, police Superintendent-in-chief Daniel Linskey said the children said they were walking on Hartford Street when they passed a bearded man standing next to a four-door black sedan, he said.

“They heard what they thought was a screaming female voice coming from the area of the bag,’’ Linskey said. “They assumed, based on what they heard and saw, that somebody was struggling inside the bag and had been kidnapped.’’

He said the children, ages 5, 8, and 10, are students at the John Winthrop Elementary School.

Linskey also said the children reported the incident to the teachers at their school, who in turn called police. In addition, the children told authorities there was a passenger in the vehicle.

All of the students at the Winthrop school were accounted for, Linskey said, and there were no reports of missing children linked to the neighborhood. He also said there were no outstanding restraining orders, or reports of violence between drug dealers that matched up to what the children reported.

Police spokesman David Estrada said tonight that the department reduced the number of officers working the case after analyzing surveillance footage from the area and determining that there were no reports of domestic violence or missing persons nearby.

“Initially of course we treated it as what the reported incident was,” Estrada said. “But it’s since been determined that it doesn’t appear that it was a kidnapping.”