Neighbor: Suspect in girl’s disappearance once approached her grandson

There’s been a lot of police activity in the Milton neighborhood where missing 9-year-old girl Charlotte Sena was found alive on Monday.

Police were led there by a fingerprint on a ransom note left in the mailbox of Charlotte’s parents, they said. The fingerprint hit for a DWI in Saratoga in 1999. That’s where they eventually found the suspect, Craig Nelson Ross, and Charlotte.

Neighbors were surprised by the police activity.

“I didn’t even know until my kids. I texted both of them and said there was all this activity on Barrett Road, can you imagine,” said one woman. “Then they texted me and said that it was on the news and who it was, and I was shocked.”

Another neighbor said she was planting with her then 9-year-old grandson two months ago, went back to turn on the spigot, heard the dog barking, and came back to see Ross standing over her grandson.

“Usually, I approach people politely, but I had a very bad feeling in my stomach, and I said, ‘Hey, what’s going on here, and he said ‘Oh, nothing,’ and he starts backpedaling a little a couple of steps.”

She said he said he wanted help with a weed whacker, so she said she would get her husband.

“He says, ‘Nope, no, no, no I’m okay’ and he got on — he had this white bicycle placed way out by the side of the road and he went across my lawn, jumped on the bike and headed east,” she said. “Last night, when all this went down, all I went back to was that, and how very, very close I believe from the bottom of my heart that that could have been my grandson.”

That neighbor says she wants to remind people that things can happen quickly, anytime, and anyplace.

She along with many others in the area, is rejoicing that Charlotte is back home with her family.