The boy, at 2, wasn't very verbal and when he did talk, it was difficult to understand him. But his older sister gave her name and talked about her grandmother. Then she offered a detail that scared the neighbors.

"As well as we could make out, she said, 'A man with a gun took my mama's car,'" the neighbor recalled.

The neighbors called police and had the children wait on the neighbor's front porch until officers arrived.

During their visit, they asked the girl what the bad man looked like.

"He was ugly," the girl offered.

Once they started talking to her, she calmed down and was doing her best to communicate what had happened. The whole time, she stayed close to her little brother, who seemed confused.

The neighbors asked about the stuffed reindeer she carried, but she wouldn't give its name.

The man on Fairham who first spotted the girl said the responding officers showed up quickly and were kind, and it was clear they had been well trained in how to deal with children. But, the resident said, even when a female sergeant arrived, the children would not get into a police car with the strangers. So police brought the children's mother to them.