A Queens hairdresser who vanished last week after dropping her 6-year-old daughter off at school complained about a creepy stranger she kept encountering by the school grounds, her distraught niece said yesterday.
A worried Jamaica Smith, 39, had told family members about an unidentified man who harassed her as he hung around PS 156 in Laurelton, where her daughter, Jailyn, attends school.
“She mentioned to us about this guy in the street she would see every day,” said Monique Vereen, 34, who fears her aunt, with whom she lives, may have been abducted by the unidentified man.
“He was real aggressive toward her, always saying, ‘Hey, baby, you look so pretty.’ ”
Vereen insisted that cops told her there were witnesses who had spotted Smith — last seen at the school a week ago this morning — struggling with a man in a gray van on Conduit Boulevard near her St. Albans home.
“We know for a fact she was abducted because she would never leave her daughter,” said Vereen.
Smith, who had been living in Tennessee with Jailyn until last June, was supposed to meet a carpet installer at her home, but never showed up for the morning appointment.
Police denied the abduction account and do not believe foul play was involved.
Vereen is offering a reward for information about the disappearance.
“It makes me a bit nervous,” one mother at the Laurelton school said yesterday. “This is supposed to be a safe neighborhood. Now I don’t feel so safe anymore.”
Additional reporting by John Doyle