A 25-year-old man is in custody and his two children are safe after he allegedly assaulted the toddlers’ mother and then drove off with the girls, age one and three. The suspect was arrested late Friday morning after an Amber Alert and a police search of a wooded area in the Saint Paul suburb of Cottage Grove. Public Safety Director Peter Koerner says, “It was tips that kind of led us, the sightings. That’s why we kept tightening up the perimeter like we did…. We started a much larger perimeter and then, as we started identifying which neighborhood we believed he was in, we were able to keep tightening up the perimeter.”
A nearby middle school was locked down as a precaution and residents in the immediate area were told to stay inside and lock their doors.