Cops were looking for two suspects in the shocking abduction of a Northridge 10-year-old early yesterday, a victim who was held for 12 hours and suffered “very traumatic … indignities,” LAPD Commander Andrew Smith told reporters in an afternoon news conference.

Smith seemed to downplay a report in the Los Angeles Times indicating that detectives were looking into a pair of brothers convicted of kidnapping their own children, one of whom was a relative of yesterday's female victim. The commander, however, …

… did not rule out the possibility that cops were looking at the duo. “We look at all those things,” he said.

“We have not identified the suspects in this case,” Smith said. “We're looking at this as a stranger abduction.”

Smith urged L.A. parents to be extra vigilant “with our children,” including double checking doors and windows at night to ensure they're locked:

Until these two individuals are caught we don't know what they're capable of.

The girl's mother went to check on her at 3:40 a.m. yesterday after hearing a noise in the house, according to the commander. That's when the family realized she had gone missing.

The victim was transported in different cars to locations that included a storage facility at Mason Avenue and Nordhoff Street only blocks from the girl's Northridge home in the 8800 block of Oakdale Avenue, Smith said.

Police were also looking at a “truck” that might be connected to the abduction, he said.


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She “had to go through who knows what kind of indignities,” Smith said. She's “a young child who has to live with the things that have happened to her for the rest of her life.”

Cops would not elaborate further on what, exactly, happened to the victim.

She was dropped off at a Kaiser medical facility with facial injuries but apparently wandered to a nearby gas station, where a good samaritan recognized her and called or flagged down cops about 2:50 p.m. yesterday, according to Smith and other police officials.

The girl so far has only given vague suspect descriptions, mainly that one of the two appeared to be an 18-year-old white man, Smith said.

Detectives want tipsters to come forward if they have even the slightest clues in the case, Smith said: 213-486-6890.

[@dennisjromero / djromero@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]

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