Briant Rodriguez is Missing: Gunmen Abduct 3-Year-Old Boy from San Bernardino Home

People get robbed all the time. Sometimes they are robbed while they are at home. Even more rarely does a robbery occur when someone is at home and one of the things taken is a child. Although that strange scenario may not ever seem to happen, it is exactly what occurred to the Rodriguez family Sunday afternoon in a daring daylight robbery in San Bernardino, California, that saw a mother and four of her children bound while thieves plundered their home, then left, taking the youngest, a 3-year-old boy, with them.

San Bernardino Sheriff's Lt. Rick Ells said, "It's horrifying. I don't think I could impress on you how rare a kidnapping like this is."

According to the Associated Press, an Amber Alert was issued for Briant Rodriguez about nine hours after the two men carrying handguns first burst into the house. The incident unfolded as the gunmen tied up the family. They ransacked the house, stole money and property, then left, taking little Briant with them. As they left, they warned that the police were not to be called.

Sheriff's spokesperson Cindy Beavers said that an 8-year-old managed to free himself and then untie the rest of the family. They then notified the police.

Lt. Ells said that it did not look as if it were a familial kidnapping. He noted that the father was at work at the time of the abduction. Also complicating matters is that no one saw the vehicle the gunmen were in.

Sheriff's spokesperson Jodi Miller said that U.S. and Mexico authorities had been alerted at the border. The FBI is also assisting in the investigation.

Briant Rodriguez is three feet tall. He weighs about 40 pounds. He is Hispanic, has brown eyes and long, curly brown hair. At the time he was taken, he was wearing a yellow shirt, blue-striped shorts, and black sandals.

The details read like a crime thriller. And as one gets to the end of the first chapter, one simply knows that the gunmen are going to make demands. Or at least, that might be one way a novelist might handle it.

But this is reality. And people are, if nothing else, unpredictable. Gunmen on the run may act in certain predictable ways, lay low, hoping that they cannot be identified in any manner. Two men with a child have far more to worry about. Depending upon their motives for taking the boy in the first place, he must be provided for and kept out of sight. If ransom is involved, care must be taken not to give the police leads before the final transaction takes place and a getaway can be had.

But there is a more sinister side to this story. The part where the gunmen warned that the police were not to be notified. This could have been a typical delaying ploy, but it could have been a warning of threat. Of course, the gunmen may not mean to return to boy at all, which leads to darker scenarios.

The root of it all lies in why the child was taken. Without finding the gunmen or contact from the two men (or a third party), that question may unfortunately never be answered.

Briant Rodriguez was abducted long before the Amber Alert was issued, which was near midnight. In the hours the gunmen had before authorities sent out alerts, he may have already been taken south of the border. Hopefully for the Rodriguez family, this will turn out to not be the case.

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Source:

Associated Press