Dean Rune Duncan, 69, was ordered to remain in the Cache County Jail after appearing in Logan’s 1st District Court on a first-degree felony charge of attempted aggravated child kidnapping. Judge Spencer Walsh assigned him a public defender, and Duncan is scheduled for another hearing Sept. 16, according to Cache Valley Daily. He is presumed innocent unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
The case concerns an Aug. 24 encounter at Blacksmith Fork Park in Hyrum, where deputies say Duncan approached an 8-year-old girl and told her that her mother had sent him to pick her up. The account reported by Cache Valley Daily says the girl asked him to give a private word used by her family to verify an adult’s claim. When he said he did not know it, she said she would call police and went to notify her mother.
Residents had also posted warnings on a local Facebook page about an older man asking children where they lived. Photos showed a vehicle and its license plate, which deputies used to identify Duncan as the registered owner of a gold Honda CR-V, according to the report. Deputies later found the vehicle outside Duncan’s Hyrum home. After receiving Miranda warnings, he acknowledged that he had been at the park and had driven the SUV, while claiming the girl’s mother had sent him. He could not provide the family code requested by the child.
A detective later arranged an interview with the girl at the Cache Children’s Justice Center in Logan, where she recounted the same incident details she had previously given her mother, Cache Valley Daily reported.
Utah Code § 76-4-102 classifies an attempt to commit child kidnapping as a first-degree felony punishable by an indeterminate prison term of at least three years and up to life. The statute is available from the Utah State Legislature.
Family safety guidance commonly recommends creating a private word or phrase that children can use to check whether an unfamiliar adult was actually sent by a parent, according to How-To Geek. That general advice is separate from the allegations against Duncan and does not determine the facts of the case.
