Florida

Abducted 11-year-old reunited with family

An 11-year-old boy who allegedly had been taken from his school by a convicted child molester was reunited with his family Saturday in Ocala while dozens of police searched for the kidnapping suspect in Georgia.

The boy was hugged by his mother as he emerged from a police car outside the Marion County sheriff’s office.

His father, Ivert Kirkirt, said the boy was surprised by all the attention and looked good after the ordeal. “He said, ‘Dad, stop crying,'” Kirkirt said.

Meanwhile, police continued searching for Frederick Fretz, 42, who was believed to be hiding in woods near where the boy was found Friday in northwest Georgia, said Maj. Mike Powell of the police department in Emerson, Ga. Powell said there was no indication the boy had been molested.

The father said Fretz never told him he had been convicted of sexually assaulting an 11-year-old boy in 1991 in Pennsylvania.

San Francisco

Roe v. Wade rallies mark anniversary

Advocates on both sides of the abortion issue marched Saturday in demonstrations across the country to mark the 32nd anniversary of the historic U.S. Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal.

The anniversary came amid speculation that retirements on the Supreme Court could alter its makeup and its long-standing defense of the Roe v. Wade decision during President Bush’s second term. Chief Justice William Rehnquist is 80 and suffering from thyroid cancer.

In San Francisco, thousands of abortion opponents marched on the city’s waterfront, chanting slogans like “Women deserve better,” while abortion rights supporters tried to drown them out with their own rallying cries.

Elsewhere, abortion opponents marched on state capitols in Colorado, South Carolina and Texas.

Texas

Community mourns store clerk’s slaying

Shoppers on Saturday placed flower bouquets and teddy bears on a table inside a Wal-Mart store where a 19-year-old employee was abducted earlier this week and later found dead.

Police, meanwhile, tried to piece together what happened between the time a surveillance camera captured Megan Leann Holden’s abduction late Wednesday and the discovery of her body Friday in a ditch about 380 miles away.

Authorities said Holden was shot to death by a man who went on a multistate crime spree before turning up Friday at an Arizona hospital with a gunshot wound.

The suspect, Johnny Lee Williams, 24, was jailed in Arizona on $1 million bond on an aggravated kidnapping charge from Texas, authorities said.

Police said Williams, who was discharged last year after four years as a Marine and serving in Iraq, was arrested last month in Tyler on a cocaine possession charge. He was released the same day on $2,000 bond.

Washington, D.C.

President ventures out for Alfalfa Club dinner

Even the capital’s heaviest snow of the season couldn’t keep President Bush away when there were jokes to be told.

The president and his wife, Laura, braved snow-covered downtown streets in their motorcade to attend Saturday’s Alfalfa Club dinner, an annual event where Washington political and business leaders gather to give humorous speeches.

The event was closed to news media coverage.

Today, the president is scheduled to fly to the Camp David presidential retreat and remain there until Monday afternoon. He will speak to an anti-abortion rally in Washington by telephone Monday.