Read the whole story to realize how stupid this is. Not sure what’s worse, the inane charges against the kid or the irresponsible reporting that outed the child’s name. Both may have destroyed the boy’s future. Question: Would the Sheriff’s Office have filed charges if the media hadn’t gotten involved?
Moral: Teach your kids to never help anyone. Ever. EVER!
UPDATE: Looks like the original story may not be accurate, assuming this guy is for real. If so, this could be more a case of bad, sensationalized reporting than of bad police work. On the other hand, scan down the comments in the reddit post to see some contrary opinions. To take it to the extreme, the guy on reddit could be the arresting cop trying to save face.
I know that in this paranoid world, you never approach a small child who is by herself, take her by the hand and walk out of a store with her in search of mommy. But I am not 14 years old. I am not Edwin.
Last week, Edwin went to the Burlington Coat Factory store on West Colonial Drive with his mother.
He saw a 3-year-old girl without a parent. If he had it to do all over again, if he could see the cops, the handcuffs, the TV cameras and the jail cell all awaiting him, I imagine the last thing he would have done was try to help her.
But he did.
I pieced together what happened from the investigative report, a 911 call, surveillance video, news reports and interviews with the Orange County Sheriff’s Office.
Makes this article, “Do laws even matter today?”, even more relevant:
A legal system cannot demand the faith and fealty of the governed when rules are seen as arbitrary and deceptive. Our leaders have led us not to an economic crisis or an immigration crisis or an environmental crisis or a civil liberties crisis. They have led us to a crisis of faith where citizens no longer believe that laws have any determinant meaning. It is politics, not the law, that appears to drive outcomes — a self-destructive trend for a nation supposedly defined by the rule of law.
No good deed goes unpunished. A lesson this 14 year old just learned. Welcome to America were we, as a country, are fucking stupid, slow and nuts. Here’s your sign.
I’ve had a similar thing happen.
I was shopping one day, minding my own business, when I spotted a little girl, I’d guess about 2, standing all alone in the middle of the center. I had my son with me at the time (was 2.5 at the time), and I am a helpful person, so I went over.
I calm down the distraught child, and, in accordance with center procedure, begin taking her to the Information Desk, where an announcement will be put over the PA about a lost child.
I am about halfway (I was about 25 meters from the desk from where she was), when I feel her hand reefed out from mine, and I whirl around to face a very angry lady, who begins a tirade at me, accusing me of not only stealing her daughter, but of stealing another child (my son, who bears no resemblance to me admittedly).
Drawing up my full 5’7, I calmly but forcefully told her to back the hell down. I told her what I had been about to do (alert her to her missing kid… tell me, how does one not notice?), and that perhaps, if she can’t keep her daughter close, then to avail herself of one of the many free shopping trolleys the center provides. And as for my son, I am aware he doesn’t look a thing like me, but her certainly looks like his father, who is in our family photo, which I carry in my wallet, or does she think I steal photographs too?
Sadly it’s come to the stage were you just put your head down and mind your own F’ing business. The risk being you might end up on the sex offenders list.
The lesson is to stop, call 911, wait for the “authorities” to arrive and handle the situation. That is because we, the non-authorities, are totally incapable of dealing with any situation. Unless we are up to no good. None of can be trusted.
Just hope and pray that when the authorities do arrive you don’t get tazed.
Or, simply ignore the situation and walk on by so that later you can be berating for being uncaring and self-involved. Sadly, this last option seems to have the least negative impact on yourself.
The Sheriff’s office will be ridiculed for a couple of days and called racist. Then everyone will forget this ever happened except the 14y/o. He won’t forget this ever. Maybe some lawyer will come along and have the Sheriff contribute to the kid’s mental therapy for the false arrest.
Those that claim this would deter them from giving any assistance wouldn’t anyway. Cases like this NEVER stand up and often end up being sued for the false arrest.
BTW, your update is bull crap. It is the fourth hand report from a blogger who claims his father works for the Sheriff’s Department who was told … .
What Mr Fusion (#6) said. Bull crap. Blogger claims his dad is a cop who claims to know the cops who arrested the kid. Bull. Crap. The only good thing was the link to the surveillance video which, though of poor quality, seems to vindicate the kid. He walks out, the girl follows, he raises his arm, possibly pointing the group of women mentioned. Shortly afterward, he walks back into the store. Strange thing for a kidnapper to do! The real stinker here is the charge of false imprisonment. That’s the best they could come up with? The video seems to show he was not holding her hand when they left the store. Any half-competent bus stop advertising lawyer will get this kid off and probably some compensation.
As an aside, it wasn’t all that long ago the mother would have been thanking the kid. We’ve become obsessed with assuming every other person you meet is a pedophile. I blame it on England where every other person you meet IS a paedophile.
Couldn’t the girl’s mother be charged with child endangerment for allowing her to get out of her sight?
Animby–you crack me up. Maybe just half the men you met in England are pedophiles===but thats another story.
Yep, I had the same situation about a year ago. 4 year old at a strip mall. I asked her if she knew where her mother was and she said No. So, I told her if she needed help to go into the store she was next to and ask for help. I then loitered around for 5 minutes until her mom showed up.
“You Know” I remember my sisters and me being abandoned all the time by my mother. Nothing ever happened except we found new people to play with. Never a bad experience. Is that weird or what?
Ya, ya, yaaa..
1. if you EVEr find a missing child in a store. ONLY take them to the nearest employee.
NOTHING ELSE.
2. Agreed. we are NOT reliable, in fixing our own problems, we cant even tie our own shoes. 911, I would like to report my shoe is untied.
3. YOU HAVE A KID? TAKE CARE OF THEM. dont leave them in the TOY dept to play.
this CHILD is 2 years OLD IT SHOULD BE AS CLOSE TO YOU AS YOUR OWN SKIN.
Then you wonder about parents using a leash on kids, and DRAGGING THEM threw a store.
yes, this happened, and the parent was arrested.
The clerk said he heard the boy tell the little girl he’d help her find her mommy. WHY DIDN’T HER MOTHER HEAR THIS? Maybe, cellphone?
When the clerk heard this, why didn’t he alert the woman he was checking out. “Hey, isn’t that Your child?” BECAUSE HE DIDN’T REALIZE SHE WAS THE CHILD’S MOTHER EITHER! If someone never looks or pays attention to a 3 year old, why would you belive it was her mother?
False imprisionment! Give me a break, he never even held the child’s hand. He wasn’t waving candy to entice her, he was trying to help find a mother that should have been paying attention to her child. The mother should be glad it was a good hearted 14 yr old. A pediphile would have been long gone before she knew the child was gone.
ECA–funny you say that. Mom got a lot of criticsim for putting us on leashes. EVEN BETTER: put us on a dog line run in the backyard. We liked being outside eating dirt and she didn’t have to worry about us wandering away.
To each their own.
here bobo..
http://huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/03/woman-drags-child-on-leas_n_250033.html
http://liveleak.com/e/a88_1249007894
child was not hurt/screaming and the mother was put in jail.
Child on a leash, what is wrong with that? The kid was misbehaving and deserved it!
#14, Riker,
It was because the mother was dragging the recalcitrant kid across the floor by the leash.
Leash? When we were kids, we couldn’t afford a leash. Mom just tied us to a tree in the backyard and scooped our poop every couple of days…
#17 Unc Patso – Well, when I said “tree” it was just a stick in the ground. But it was a tree to US!
(Thanks Unc. I wondered if anyone would understand the reference.)
#18, TREE ??? heck, when I was a kid my mother used to just ask us to go into the basement and get a jar of preserves. Somehow the door always self locked and it would take Mom a few days to find the key. Lucky for us there was a small hole she could push through some food.
Ah yes, good times.
Getting serious, yes we had the run of the town (a couple hundred people) and access to the country around us. The closest thing we ever heard about kidnappings was reading The Ransom of Red Cheif. We often went on camping trips when I was 8-12, a couple of miles away in a bush with a couple of friends.
Good times.
The vast vast VAST majority of folks would help a little girl find her mother. Why should we be punished because a tiny minority would hurt a child? Answer this question and you will have fingered a major problem with our society.