Men of boards, what innocent behaviors have you changed out of fear?

Lakeland police, in a Facebook post, said the falsely accused man was visiting friends at a softball game when he noticed at a 2-year-old had gotten separated from her parents. She was “wandering by herself,” police said, and the man “believed that she was lost.

“The citizen attempted to ask the girl where her parents were and walked with her in hopes she could point them out,” the statement said, a fact verified by at least one independent witness.

At that point, “bystanders” told the parents that the man was “attempting to kidnap the child,” said police.

As the two were nearing the playground, three men approached them from behind, Patch reported. One man grabbed the girl and the other man, who is the child’s father, punched the man five or six times.

“I thought he was trying to take my daughter,” the girl’s father told News Channel 8.

“I saw this man with my daughter in his hands walking toward the parking lot. What would you do?” the father asked. “I wanted to kill him.”
Police concluded that the man was only trying to help. “We had an independent eyewitness that saw him walking around, asking, ‘Is this your parents? Is that your father?’” Sgt. Gary Gross with the Lakeland Police Department told Fox 13 News.
The father and his friends were not satisfied with the man’s explanation or that of the police. “So, I guess in Lakeland, you can kidnap a child and get away with it,” the father said to police, local media reported. The police report, local media said, described the father as “increasingly agitated.”

According to WFLA, other media outlets and police, family members and friends went on social media and shared the man’s photo, his Facebook page and his place of business, “calling him a child predator,” WFLA said.