Jacyee Dugard had contact with neighbor in years after kidnapping

From today’s story:

Special section devoted to Jacyee Lee Dugard case.

An Antioch resident whose backyard shares a fence with the Garrido property once spoke to a little girl through that fence, he said Friday.

She told him her name was Jaycee.

Patrick McQuaid, 27, was a child when he saw a blonde girl through the chicken wire fence that used to separate his Bown Lane backyard from the Garridos’ yard. He said he believes it was around the summer of 1991, not long after Jaycee Lee Dugard was kidnapped from a South Lake Tahoe bus stop.

“I thought she was pretty,” McQuaid said.

After he learned Jaycee’s name, McQuaid, who had never seen any children through the fence before, asked whether she lived there or was just visiting. He said she told him she was living there, but before he could ask more questions Phillip Garrido came out and took her into the house.

“I didn’t think anything of it. I was young,” McQuaid said.

Soon after, Garrido built the eight-foot privacy fence that now separates the two yards. McQuaid said he never saw the girl again. The next time he saw children near the Garrido house was this summer, when he saw two young girls riding in Garrido’s car.

Though the two children Dugard bore with Garrido are 15 and 11, McQuaid said the children he saw in Garrido’s car looked younger — closer to 8 and 10 years old.