Last Friday I saw a man carrying a young girl in a fireman’s carry while walking down a public, crowded sidewalk. The girl was yelling “Put me down, let me go,” so I didn’t really think too much of it. All the threads pitting strangers who offer parenting advice, and the general desire to not get involved kept me and all of the other people on the street from doing or saying anything. This most likely was a simple incident of a father carrying his unruly daughter or even just some horsing around. Her yells seemed more angry than fearful, and she was not saying “Help, help” but “put me down.” I hope if she’d been saying “Help, Help!” I and others would have done something.
It wasn’t until later this weekend that I saw a young girl had been abducted in the area. Of course, the “area” was in another city about 15 miles south of where I saw this happen. Then this morning I saw that they had discovered her backpack in between where she disappeared and where I saw the girl being carried.
Weighing things, I decided it was probably better to risk wasting the police’s time following up a false lead, than to possibly let something real be missed. Because I have a parking stub, and I know where this was, I can give the police a specific time and location, which is covered by cameras. If this turns out to be nothing (which it probably is) I’ve wasted the time of whoever read my email, the detective who called me, and any followup of going through camera footage. On the other hand, what if the kidnapper really was brazen enough to walk down a crowded street with this poor girl?
I know strangers taking kids is very rare, and hopefully she turns up, and it was just some stupid custody thing. It sure was scary to watch the cops walking side by side on the grassy edges of the highway this morning and know it’s because someones kid is missing.
So, what’s the right thing to do when seeing something a bit out of the ordinary, like a child older than a toddler being carried in protest? Be one of those pitted strangers that gets in the face of a parent? Ignore it, because it hasn’t crossed that threshold into undeniably wrong where it would truly only be fear holding me (or anybody else) back from acting? In hindsight it will probably be obvious if ignoring this at the time was the right thing to do, and multiple police agencies are already spending valuable man hours chasing 100s of leads, most of which are probably completely false, and I’ve probably added to that burden.
Just this past Friday, five of us from work walked to a restaurant in Downtown Los Angeles. Busy area at a busy time of day. We happened to pass by a guy doing basically the exact same thing you described, except he was carrying the girl more like a football under his arm rather than over the shoulder. The girl was screaming, although to us, not with a great deal of protest. As he was walking, a car with a female driver pulled up to the sidewalk, and he loaded the child into the car. After we’d gotten stopped at a light, waiting to cross the street, we all turned and watched the remainder of this scene and laughed uncomfortably, wondering if we ought to be taking this as something nefarious rather than innocent. We all kind of assumed this wasn’t something bad because:
It was broad daylight in the middle of a busy area;
Both the male carrying the child and the female driver who pulled up were all smiles; and,
No one seemed to be in any particular hurry. In fact, I don’t think the car had even pulled away yet by the time we crossed the street and it left our minds.
Still, in retrospect, and particularly in light of reading your OP, I can’t help but wonder if we should have been more suspicious than we were. I imagine that most kidnappers would do their best to look like they had an unruly child, and that nothing out of the ordinary were taking place.
I’m guessing that the police would rather have 100 false but well-intended leads than no leads at all. I don’t see anything wrong with reporting what you saw.
I don’t recall who advised me but I was told to ask “Is that your Dad or Is that your Mom?” I have done it on occasion and once got into a minor altercation with a person who insisted on answering and not letting the child speak.
Personally, I would never ignore a situation where a child could potentially be in danger however remote the possibility.
When I lived in south Florida, I knew a guy who did some work at the local newspaper. He wrote an article where he was out with some friends at a bar that was outdoors. A guy was dragging a young girl to a car in the parking lot, and it definitely didn’t seem right to him. He hopped over the railing of the bar he was at, and moved his car to block the guy’s car so he couldn’t leave. About a minute later, a frantic woman ran up looking for her daughter who was in the car. Police involvement ensued.
I’ve tried to look for the article on line, but it was published in the late 1980s so it doesn’t seem to be available.
What really stuns me is the guy got just five years in prison. FIVE YEARS?? For snatching a six-year-old girl in front of everybody? It’s obvious what he had in mind for the girl, and yeah, he didn’t get a chance to do it. But by now, this guy is back on the street, probably doing the same thing. This guy needs to be put away permanently.
Remember, it was the late 1980’s. A lot has changed in the sentencing laws since then.
I would definitely confront the person and ask what was going on. But I do know self-defense and you’d be surprised how many people on a crowded street will get involved once one person does.
On the other side, one of the things we learned in self defense classes was exactly this sort of thing - don’t say “put me down” or even “help” but try and remain calm and say things like
Call 911! I am not with this person! I am not going voluntarily!
I know it seems like a lot but even saying what you need in the imperative “Call 911!” not “help, help!” makes a difference. People do better with clear instructions.
I remember from CPR class, we were taught to point at somebody, and say, “You, call 911.” Not “Somebody call 911” because that requires an individual to take initiative. People are often good at following instructions when they otherwise don’t know what to do.
When she was about 3, my daughter went to the local Walmart with her daddy, She was warned ahead of time that there would be no toys bought. When he wouldn’t buy her a toy, she started pitching a hissy fit as only a 3 year old can. Deeply embarasssed, her daddy picked her up to carry her out of the store. She immediately started shouting “you are not my real daddy!” God only knows where she conjured up this phrase, but her daddy was sweating bullets and expecting to have a shotgun pulled on him before he got to his truck. Fortunately, no incident happened and he wore her tail out when he got her home. The incident was never repeated, but has passed into family legend. Afterwards, her daddy expressed concern that he carried no actual proof that she was his child, not even a current picture of her. (not that that would consitute proof, really)
The moral of the story: sometimes it is just a family problem. Sometimes, it isn’t, so go ahead and call the cops if you feel the need. If it is legit, it can all be sorted.
I’ve had this (that is, yelling kid, uncertain relationship with adult) happen many times in front of me. Being a non-threatening middle aged hippie chick, it’s pretty easy for me to be a buttinsky and say something like, “Everything okay? Do you need a hand?” and gauge the reaction. My sense is that a caregiver will seem frazzled, embarrassed and possibly angry, and that’s all pretty normal. An abductor will probably be more nervous or downright scared.
I’ve alerted security twice, just because I wasn’t sure. Each time, I asked if I needed to stick around, and was told no, they’d handle it. So I have absolutely no idea if my intuition is correct or not, but I feel better for stepping in.
(Heck, a couple of times, it *has *been a frustrated parent, and she’s burst into tears when I ask, and dropped the kid. I take a few moments to give them both some emotional support and just generally try to diffuse the situation. One of the women I gave my email to, and she’s now a good friend. As people on this board know, I’m not at all a believer in MYOB when it comes to misbehaving kids; I’m an “it takes a village” person.)
2 and 3 match the couple who tried to kidnap me at high noon, on a Sunday in Barcelona many years ago.
Until I almost managed to use the door of their own car to break a few bones on the woman, that is (I closed the door she was half out of, but missed hitting the bitch). I was just coming from nearby Mercat de Sant Antoni, which like every Sunday had a ton of people, and I was able to get within sight of it before those two could turn the car around, but damnit that was one scary morning.
No, I did’t file a denuncia. My experience with authority was that they would never help me, and with cops in Barcelona that as soon as they heard you were from Navarre they dropped the minimal “good cop” veneer altogether. My actions re those two are limited to hoping they ran out of brakes and into a brick wall.