News

March 14, 2009

Man charged in abduction try

Edwardsville defendant said he was walking his son to bus stop just prior to attack.

SWOYERSVILLE – A man was arrested Friday on charges in connection with an alleged child abduction attempt and indecent assault of a 9-year-old girl on Tuesday morning.

Police allege in arrest records that Keith R. Coote, 35, attempted to abduct the girl, a third-grade student at State Street Elementary School, at a school bus stop on Church and Price streets in Edwardsville.

The girl was able to get away, dropping her jacket and backpack, police said.

Coote, of 134 Church St., Edwardsville, was charged with corruption of minors, indecent assault, terroristic threats and false reports to law enforcement, according to court records.

“Judge, it wasn’t me, man. I swear, it was not me,” said Coote, who was crying profusely as he was escorted by police into his arraignment before District Judge Andrew Barilla in Swoyersville on Friday night.

Coote said his 7-year-old is a first-grader at the Wyoming Valley West elementary school and alleged that he was walking his son to the bus stop just prior to the alleged abduction.

At his arraignment, Coote, formerly from the Bronx, N.Y., told Barilla he has a prior arrest record for violent crimes, including a gun charge stemming from 2000 and a robbery he plead guilty to when he was 16 years old in 1991.

According to the criminal complaint:

Edwardsville police responded around 9:30 a.m. to a report of a possible child abduction at 54 Church St., where the girl alleged a white man, approximately 5 feet 11 inches tall and wearing a black hoodie, approached her from behind and grabbed her backpack. The girl later told police the assailant was black.

The girl pulled away and her backpack came off along with her jacket.

The man then grabbed the hood on her sweatshirt but she was able to pull away and run toward her home. Police later learned the girl had lied about the suspect’s description because Coote told her, “He would kidnap me, take me to his house, then kill (my) mom and dad …,” according to police.

A school official later reported the girl told someone at the school the man put his left hand over her mouth and had unbuckled her pants and attempted to pull her pants down, the criminal complaint states.

On the same day of the alleged abduction attempt, Coote called police saying he had a jacket that he had pulled from a storm drain at Price and Church streets. He told police he observed a man stuffing it down the drain.

Witnesses later reported seeing a black male matching Coote’s description in the area stuffing the girl’s jacket down the drain.

He was taken to Luzerne County Correctional Facility in lieu of $300,000 straight bail. A preliminary hearing has been tentatively scheduled for March 19 at Central Court.

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