Fairfax County Police Department: Child abduction suspect IDed in 13 minutes

On July 18, 2025, a toddler wandered out of the children’s play area in a Fairfax mall. Before the child’s parents could catch up to her, a man picked her up and walked into a nearby store.

The toddler’s mother, who happened to be in that store, found and confronted the man. She took back her child, snapped a photo of the abductor’s face as he fled, and called 911.

Back at FCPD, RTCC operators were monitoring incoming 911 calls and saw the mother’s call come in. They knew FCPD’s field units were tied up in another incident and would need several minutes to get to the mall — but time was of the essence, so RTCC personnel contacted the child’s parents directly and asked them to send their photo of the suspect.

The power of universal search

The rest was a matter of minutes. RTCC Investigator Nicole Bustillos opened Peregrine, typed the suspect’s physical descriptors — hair color, build, ethnicity — into the search bar, and narrowed the results to those who have lived or been arrested in the area around the mall. Peregrine returned a list of possible suspects and their booking photos. The third person on the list looked like a match.

”It was off to the races at that point,” said Maj. Hudson Bull, who oversees FCPD’s RTCC. “We had the information that we needed. We knew who we were looking for.”

A unified person dossier

Bustillos clicked into the man’s dossier in Peregrine — an integrated profile containing information pulled from various disparate sources — and reviewed his history, which verified that he was likely to be the suspect based on previous incidents. The dossier also listed the man’s known associates, including family members, with their contact information. RTCC personnel called the suspect’s family members and confirmed his identity.

Solved in minutes, closed in hours

By the time field units arrived on the scene at the mall, the RTCC had already identified the suspect and retrieved his photo and address — all within 13 minutes of the initial 911 call.

”Our own cops were impressed,” Bull said.

Officers located the suspect at a hotel quickly thereafter. Within hours, he was apprehended and taken into custody. The child involved in the abduction case was unharmed.

”Without Peregrine, in that case, it would have been many, many more hours,” Bull said. “It probably would have taken a very long time for us to put that out to the media to say, ‘Someone please identify this guy.’”

Closing unresolved exposure cases

Peregrine assists outside the RTCC, too. In a recent case, FCPD detectives used Peregrine to identify the suspect in an exposure case — and, in turn, solve a series of open cases.

Bull said FCPD’s detectives were brand-new to Peregrine at the time and still playing around with the platform to get used to it. One detective, who was working an exposure case that occurred in a county park, wanted to see if he could use Peregrine to link the case to a known offender in the area.

The detective searched keywords like “exposure” to view relevant older cases in Peregrine. He drew a geofence around the county park, narrowing the results to nearby incidents, and identified a long list of prior exposure cases that had gone unsolved in the area. He read through the case summaries in Peregrine and noticed commonalities, including similar physical descriptions of the suspect. In the end, the detective tied together more than a dozen open exposure cases that seemed to have the same suspect.

From there, FCPD put out a bulletin detailing the suspect’s description and offering a reward for information. In response, someone submitted a tip, which ultimately led to detectives identifying the suspect and closing a number of open and pending exposure cases.

Spotting emerging crime trends

In addition to supporting active investigations, Peregrine streamlines analytics and reporting to illustrate trends in crime over time. Bull said he uses Peregrine to identify spikes in larceny, including high-risk retailers that may need more police support, and emerging crime hotspots.

Peregrine ingests open-source map data that details which businesses exist at which addresses, marrying that information with customer agencies’ data sources. This allows users to understand crime trends as they relate to specific businesses, answering questions such as, which businesses are being targeted for larceny the most often? Or, what is the incident history for this particular business?

When Bull notices spikes in larceny in FCPD’s jurisdiction, he uses this capability in Peregrine to see which retailers are being hit the hardest.

“It helps us identify where we need to move resources or ship some of our technology that we could use to help those cases,” he said. He might even reach out to a targeted business to discuss a camera sharing agreement.

He also uses a dashboard of heat maps in Peregrine to identify emerging crime hotspots. One heat map shows priority crime hotspots from the last 90 days, for example, while another shows hotspots from the last 72 hours. Any major differences between these maps indicate new or unusual trends that may require attention.

“That helps us see where the problems are starting to bubble up so we can flatten them back out,” Bull said.

Bring a force multiplier to your agency

Peregrine supplements field operations and streamlines investigations by unifying relevant data from otherwise siloed sources on one collective, intuitive platform. At FCPD, Peregrine has helped investigators quickly identify suspects and easily close unresolved cases. Leaders at FCPD also use Peregrine’s advanced analytical capabilities to inform where the agency should allocate RTCC, detective and patrol, and technology resources.

Your agency could be doing more with less. Contact our team to learn how Peregrine empowers public safety organizations of all sizes.