KEY POINTS:
Tauranga police are hunting for a man who tried to abduct a 9-year-old girl as she walked home from school.
Detectives say the case bears a sinister resemblance to the abduction of a 5-year-old girl in the city a year ago.
They are warning people in the beachside suburb of Papamoa to be vigilant after a clean-shaven European man, aged between 20 and 30, tried to kidnap the girl yesterday.
The girl was walking from Tahatai Coast School on Evans Rd to her home in Arabian Drive, less than a kilometre away, when the man yelled to her and demanded she get into a car parked on the roadside.
The frightened girl ignored his demand and ran home and told her mother, who called the police.
"It's not something which happens often, but when it does, it's a pretty worrying thing and something we take pretty seriously," Detective Sergeant Lindsay Pilbrow said.
He said all schools in the area had been informed and intensive patrols of the streets had begun in the hunt for the offender, who had acted brazenly by trying to snatch the girl on a busy street about 3pm.
He said the girl was upset, realising the potential danger of the situation, but had acted bravely.
"This girl did all the right things. She didn't get into the car. She'srun home and told somebody."
In the case last year, a man of 18 lured a Maungatapu girl into a car as she walked to school.
He indecently assaulted the 5-year-old before being found by police. He has since been jailed.
Mr Pilbrow said that although the car in the Papamoa case was not seen until yesterday, police had received reports of another car being driven in a suspicious manner in the area on Tuesday.
Tahatai Coast School principal Ian Leckie said the school had no knowledge of anyone acting suspiciously near the grounds before the attempted abduction, but said parents and children would be told of the incident and warned to be vigilant.
He also praised the girl, saying she had put into practice lessons she and other pupils learned in the "Keeping Ourselves Safe" programme.
"It's good to see that we have been very successful in this case, shocking though it is, and that the child kept herself safe."
