MADISON COUNTY • Police here say they are looking for a man believed to have tried to pick up teenage girls, possibly for sex acts, several times since June.

Highland police and Madison County detectives are investigating a possible link between at least seven reports of a man stopping to talk to teenage girls. In some of those incidents, police said the man told the girls to get in his green pickup truck and solicited them for sexual activity.

Highland Police Chief Terry Bell said officers have received three reports this week of a man with a similar description and truck stopping to talk to 13- to 15-year-old girls and trying to engage them in sexual activity.

"It's real specific, real lewd," Bell said.

There have been no reports of physical contact and none of the girls has gotten in the truck, Bell said.

All of the incidents in Highland have been within about a 10-block radius, Bell said. He said it appears the man is targeting girls after school hours.

The man stopped to talk to girls twice on Monday and once on Tuesday in Highland, Bell said.

Monday's attempts were at 4:45 p.m. in the 1100 block of Washington Street and about 5:20 p.m. in the 1400 block of Lindenthal Avenue, Bell said.

On Tuesday, a man in a green pickup stopped to talk to a teenage girl about 4:35 p.m. in the 1200 block of Pestalozzi Street.

Police are looking at a possible link to at least four other incidents in Highland and Alhambra going back several months:

• On June 2, a man in a green pickup truck stopped about 9:50 p.m. to talk to a girl in the 1300 block of Zschokke Street in Highland

• On Oct 7, a man tried to talk a girl into sex acts in the 1100 block of Washington Street in Highland.

• On Oct 20, a man asked three girls for directions after they stepped off a school bus about 3:30 p.m. in Alhambra, about 14 miles north of Highland.

• On Oct. 21, the same man returned about 3:30 p.m. to thank the three girls for directions after they got off their school bus. Detectives say he also made a comment that alarmed one of the girls enough to tell her parent about the encounter. Authorities did not disclose what the man said.

Madison County authorities are handling that case.

Bell described the man as a 25- to 40-year-old white man with brown hair, possibly a brown goatee, and wearing a baseball cap with a logo of a bird, perhaps an eagle.

Girls have also reported seeing a pink baby seat in the front passenger seat of the green truck, Bell said.

Anyone with information about the suspect is asked to call Highland police at 618-654-2131 or Madison County sheriff's deputies at 618-296-3000.