A mask-wearing madman tried to take a two-year-old girl from her mother, shouting furiously: “That's my baby!” He grabbed the toddler and ran for his life while waving a knife at the frightened woman, she told the Saturday Post.
Cecilia Carias hugged the black-haired girl and cried as she recounted the horrifying episode outside a laundromat near Atlantic Avenue and 109th Street in South Richmond Hill.
Carias, 30, was doing laundry and had taken her toddler to a mostly empty parking lot for a little playtime when a man wearing a sweatshirt approached on a purple bicycle.
“I saw a man coming towards me on a bicycle,” she recalled. “I was wondering because he was looking at us too much. Then he came closer. I thought he was doing laundry too, but he wasn't.”
Her daughter played with the leaves and fell down.
Carias said she was sitting on the ground when a strange man approached her.
According to the mother of three, he said, “'Are you okay, baby?'”
The exchange set off alarm bells for the mother of three, who grabbed her daughter and started running before being cornered at knifepoint.
“He cornered me, ran into me, pulled out a knife and said, 'That's my baby,'” she said. “He told me to give him the girl. He scared me.
“I screamed for someone to help me,” she told the Post. “I just screamed. … Despite the knife being pointed at me, I pulled myself together and my daughter and I started running screaming. … I didn't let her go for a second.”
A passing minivan reportedly stopped after some students who were riding in it saw the driver running frantically with a child in tow.
Police arrived a few minutes later.
“I couldn’t talk,” she said. “All I could do was scream and cry.”
Police told her they had already captured a man, later identified as Peter Vonderhoven, at a nearby house and brought him in for identification.
“I told them I couldn't see his face because he had a mask and hat covering his entire head. So all I could tell them was that he was carrying a little purple bicycle. ” she said.
“The police continued to search the house and suddenly they brought out a small purple bicycle…that's what I recognized.”
Since the incident, her daughter has been clinging to her for life.
“She kept hugging me,” she said. “She didn't want anyone to talk to her. She was very scared. If anyone approached her, she would cry.”
The mother, who is studying to become a nursing assistant, said she had already suffered panic attacks and was seeing a psychiatrist and was worried about the attempted kidnapping.
“In fact, every time I see someone wearing a sweatshirt, I feel like he keeps looking at me,” she said. “I feel like he's going to hurt me.”
Mr. Vonderhoven, who is being held on $30,000 bail, was charged with attempted kidnapping, possession of a weapon, endangering a child under 17 and menacing.
According to police and officials, he was also involved in two armed robberies that occurred near the same intersection.
Carias wants to put him in prison forever.
“No one has the right to steal your child or your peace,” she said.
But the mother, who also has a nine-year-old daughter and a six-year-old son, said she would remain strong for her children.
“I know I don't feel good right now, but I also know I have to face my fears,” she said. “I have a goal in life, and that is to raise my children. Even if I'm scared to death, I'm going to do it.”
