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Suspect charged in failed kidnapping
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The Hall County Sheriff’s Office has charged a suspect in the Nov. 1 attempted abduction of a 10-year-old boy that had left a North Hall community feeling uneasy.

Dwayne Seibel, 51, of Claude Parks Road, Murrayville, was arrested and charged Saturday with attempted kidnapping in a Nov. 1 incident at North Hall Estates subdivision, according to Hall County Sheriff’s Col. Jeff Strickland.

Authorities had been searching for a suspect described as a white male with very close cut hair and a close shaven goatee who reportedly approached a group of children last Sunday and told a 10-year-old boy to get in his truck. The boy refused, and the man drove off, Strickland said. Before leaving the subdivision the man stopped outside a home and spoke briefly to a woman, commenting on a puppy in her yard, Strickland said.

The subdivision is off Herbert Stephens Road off Mount Vernon Road, about two miles from North Hall High School.

Following the incident, deputies set up a mobile command post and questioned motorists in the neighborhood. Sheriff’s deputies were on hand when the neighborhood children boarded the school bus Monday, and several patrol cars were parked outside the subdivision Monday afternoon.

A sketch was compiled by a Sheriff’s Office forensic artist based on witness descriptions but a break in the case came around 9 p.m. Saturday when someone reported seeing a suspicious truck in the neighborhood again, Strickland said.

Deputies located the truck about an hour later and took the driver into custody without incident for questioning, Strickland said.

Seibel is currently being held in the Hall County Jail without bond and investigation continues.

The last attempted child abduction investigated by Hall County authorities occurred in January 2007, when a white man approached two 11-year-old girls at a park in the Four Seasons subdivision in South Hall off Gaines Ferry Road.

In that incident, the man grabbed one of the girls but she was able to break free. The man fled after the girls began screaming,

driving off in what may have been a blue Chevrolet Corvette.

No arrests were made in that case.