Bob CollinsIf you don’t mind a good beating, by all means stop to help a lost child in Lakeland, Florida.
WFLA reports that a man in a park stopped to help a 2-year-old girl walking alone, thinking she was lost.
Meanwhile, parents nearby were told that they saw the “citizen” with the girl and, well, what would you think if your kid was missing and someone said they saw her with a guy?
That’s what it’s like to be a guy trying to help a kid in a park these days.
The father and two others found the girl, then punched the man “five or six times.”
The police questioned the man and learned he was in the park visiting friends — off-duty police officers — and that he was only trying to help the girl. He refused to press charges against the father who still thinks his little girl was being abducted.
It didn’t stop with the punches, however.
Family members and friends of the family of the child shared the good samaritan’s photo on Facebook page and on his business’ Facebook page, calling him a child predator.
“This guy is a father, a local businessman, he has two children, was trying to help this child, and they turned it completely around, and that’s not right,” Sgt. Gary Gross with the Lakeland Police Department tells a Tampa TV station.
(h/t: Jim Cagle)
