CRIME: POLICE CALL OFF SEARCH IN ALLEGED ABDUCTION CASE

SCOTT CITY, Mo. -- Without leads or a good description, police have ended their search for a man said to have kidnapped a woman and forced her to drive from St. Louis to Scott City this week.

"We don't have anyone besides the victim who has seen this man," said sheriff's Sgt. Jerry Bledsoe.

Four law enforcement agencies with two K-9 units searched for a man carrying an automatic handgun and wearing baggy clothes with a ski mask over his face until late Thursday before stopping, said Scott City Police Chief Danny Clubb.

The manhunt started when a 37-year-old woman told police she had been kidnapped at gunpoint at south Compton and Lafayette avenues in St. Louis Thursday.

The kidnapper put a gun to the woman's side and told her to drive south on I-55.

The abduction ended when the woman accelerated down the exit ramp at Scott City, where the kidnapper struggled for control of the steering wheel before fleeing the car near Scott City school grounds.

A bloodhound from the Miner, Mo., police and a dog from the Missouri State Highway Patrol were unable to discover a scentto track the suspect, Clubb said.

Police conducted searches around the school, a truck stop and the Cape Girardeau Regional Airport.

Woman recalls gun

"When somebody jumps from a car and goes running, he has to go somewhere," Clubb said.

The woman, uncertain about the kidnapper's description, was sure about his gun, Bledsoe said. She described it as a blue steel semiautomatic pistol.

The woman told Bledsoe she only stopped her late model Pontiac Sunfire once between St. Louis and Scott City. She was running out of gasoline, and the man told her to exit at Perryville, Mo., where she pulled into a service station.

She put in $10 worth of gasoline, as her abductor hid on the car's floorboard, Bledsoe said.

When she went inside to pay, she attempted to convey her problem through eye contact and subtle gestures. But when the cashier didn't understand her signals, she said she returned to the gunman in her car.

When Bledsoe asked the woman why she didn't flee from her captor at the service station, she responded that she was too afraid to know what to do.