Police have arrested a man on traffic charges who matches the description of a suspect who twice tried to lure kids into a truck while posing as a deputy, authorities say.
Michael Don Ashcraft, 41, of Laporte was arrested at 9 p.m. Friday in the 3100 block of Kinsley Court on traffic charges, said Eloise Campanella of the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office.
Ashcraft is under investigation in two child-luring cases in which a man posing as a deputy tried to get children into his truck last week in Larimer County, she said.
A man matching Ashcraft’s description approached five kids in an alley behind a business in the 3300 block of County Road 54G at 4 p.m. Friday, Campanella said. He asked the children what they were doing there and told them to get in his truck so he could take them to jail, she said.
The suspect is described as a heavyset white man in his 40s, with white hair and a goatee. The man has a small scar on his right cheek, she said.
He was driving a tan Chevrolet S-10 pickup with a dirty camper shell. He was last seen driving north on County Road 21C.
Ashcraft is also similar in appearance to a suspect posing as a deputy in Fort Collins who tried to lure a 13-year-old girl into his pickup earlier in the week, Campanella said. A man driving an extended-cab red pickup attempted to abduct the girl about 4 p.m. Tuesday, according to Fort Collins police.
The girl described the man as white and 35 to 40 years old, with strawberry-blond hair and a red goatee. He was wearing a light-brown jacket under a heavy-duty jacket.
The teenager, a student at Lincoln Junior High School, was walking along Taft Hill Road and Laporte Avenue near a convenience store when the man pulled over, opened his window and claimed to be a sheriff’s deputy.
He told her to get into the truck, said Rita Davis, spokeswoman for the Fort Collins Police Department.
Davis said the girl told the man no, and when he insisted she get in the truck, she fled to the convenience store for help.
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com
