Winnipeg police have charged a man with abduction after he and a missing 14-year-old Saskatchewan girl were located at a bus depot.
Police arrested the suspect, who may have met the girl over the Internet, at a downtown Winnipeg bus station Tuesday afternoon.
RCMP officers in Swift Current, Sask., had described the girl as a "missing person" but investigators believe the girl left her home voluntarily.
The girl left a farewell note, which was found by her mother, according to RCMP Sgt. Brad Kaeding.
"We do understand that she left a note at the family home and advised that she was leaving," he said Wednesday in Regina.
Police in Winnipeg were alerted Tuesday morning that the girl was on a Greyhound bus heading east, and they intercepted the vehicle shortly after it arrived in the city.
Investigators believe the girl may have met the suspect over the Internet, according to a police press release, but that has not been confirmed.
Winnipeg police Sgt. Kelly Dennison said children need to be wary of who they meet on social networking websites, chat rooms and online forums.
"We live in the age of MSN and of all these different Internet pages, where you never know who you're meeting and who you're talking to," he told CTV Winnipeg.
But Signy Arnason, of the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, said the key issue is educating children about acceptable behaviour from adults.
"It is strange and abnormal for an adult to want to befriend a child," she said. "Children should be aware of that, and that should tune them in that there's something not right about it."
Police have charged 41-year-old Daniel George Nickolson of Windsor, Ont., with abducting a person under the age of 16.
With a report by CTV's Caroline Barghout
