A teenage boy missing since 2002 was stopped three times by police who even gave him a lift “home” to his abductor, his best friend said yesterday.

Tony Douglas told how 15-year-old Shawn Hornbeck, and the man they thought was his father, moved into their suburb of St. Louis, Mo., four and a half years ago.

The boys hit it off right away and spent their spare time riding bikes together, eating fast food, going to the cinema, and hanging out at the local shopping mall in Kirkwood.

“He said his name was Shawn Devlin. I went to his home almost every day,” Tony told Fox News. Police confronted the pair on three occasions for breaking a local curfew on youngsters being out at night, he said.

“Sometimes, the cop would just drive us home, or he’d let us walk away if we were in Kirkwood already,” he said.

Tony’s mother, Rita Lederle, said she used to treat Shawn like a son. “I really felt close to him, like a mother,” she said.

Shawn called Michael Devlin his father, and no one doubted the story, she said.

“I feel sorry for the parents,” she added. “If I’d known, I would have contacted the parents in some way.”

Devlin, a pizzeria manager and part-time funeral parlor worker, has been charged with kidnapping.

Shawn was 11 when he vanished in October 2002 as he rode a bicycle to a friend’s house in the rural town of Richwoods, Mo.

A major search failed to find any trace, only for him to suddenly reappear last Friday. Police, searching for another teenage boy, William Ownby, who had been missing for days, discovered them both in Devlin’s tiny apartment 65 miles away in St Louis.

William had gone missing three days earlier, after getting off a school bus. Friends reported seeing a dilapidated white pick-up truck speeding away from the scene.

When officers arrived at Devlin’s home to serve a warrant in an unrelated case, they spotted a truck matching the description and searched his flat. Shawn immediately identified himself to the officers. Both boys were apparently unharmed.

Craig Akers, Shawn’s stepfather, said the boy had seen “missing” posters and photographs of himself that had been stuck to benches outside grocery stores, along with a computer-created image of how he might have aged. “The only comment I’ve heard from him so far is that the age-progressed photo was an insult.”