A neighbor of the man who was arrested for the kidnapping of nine-year-old Charlotte Sena claimed he tried to snatch her grandson out of her front yard in July.
Carol Brown, 61, told The Post that police showed her a photo of Craig Ross Jr., 46, who was arrested Monday for allegedly snatching Sena — and she immediately recognized him.
“I told the police that a man had tried to grab my grandson back in July. That’s when they showed me the pictures,” Brown told The Post. “I recognized him immediately, 100%. Immediately, I said that’s him.”
Brown claimed she and her grandson Braiden were doing yard work back in July when Ross appeared looming over the 10-year-old while she went out back to turn the spigot on for the hose.
“I heard the dog start freaking out, really freaking out, so I ran back around to see what was going on and there was a very scary-looking man standing over my grandson who was crouching down over the weed whacker,” she said. “He was standing over him, inches away.”
The grandmother said Ross had been wearing “Native American” style earrings with “feathers and hoops” that appeared to be dreamcatchers, but said other than that, he looked just like his mugshot. The alleged kidnapper appeared disheveled in his jailhouse photo with a scraggly beat and unkempt hair.
After Brown ran over toward her grandson, Ross reportedly started “backing up” and told her he was just asking Braiden to help him “load the string on my new weed whacker.” When Brown suggested she’d get her husband to help, the alleged kidnapper “sprinted” toward a bicycle he left in the road, saying: “Oh, no, no, no. I’m okay.”
“When the police showed me his picture I would have fell down if I wasn’t already sitting,” the grandmother told The Post. “My grandson freaked out when he saw that when I showed him the picture of the man that we saw back in July.
“For weeks after, I was creeped out, we both were. We’ve lived here for 30 years I’ve never seen anything like that. 100%! In hindsight, I believe I hadn’t if I hadn’t run around the house when I heard the dog freaking out my grandson would be gone.”
Brown — whose husband recently retired from his job as a detective — said they suspected that “something” was going on in his house, but they didn’t “know the people.”
The grandmother said she “prayed for 48 hours” after the alert for Sena went out. She knew something was up when police arrived on Ross’ property, according to CBS New York.
Ross was arrested Monday after he was linked through fingerprints to a ransom note left in the Sena family’s mailbox.
The nine-year-old girl was found in a cupboard inside the trailer he was living in in his mother’s backyard. She was not injured but was taken to the hospital as a precaution.
The suspect, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, was charged with one count of kidnapping and is expected to face more charges.
He is due back in court later this week.