Derby toddler suspicious incident

[Wishfulmakeupping]

www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/CCTV/story-21075947-detail/story.html
Just saw this on the news

I think of could be innocent but equality might not be. I assume the police have access to more cctv (and if no recorded sound then eyewitness amounts of what was said) so can properly determine what happened.

If I had been there I would have paused, crouched down and spoken to a child I thought was lost. But in not only a mum but used to children. But I can see that someone might not act like that and so be trying to help.

I expect the mum looks slow to react but is actually speaking, either calling the child or saying "it's ok he is with me" or something.

The fact Police think it may be suspicious is something. My DS will sometimes dawdle that distance behind me, to me it's quite blatant he's with his mum.

A good warning to us all to keep our DC in front or beside us.

I'm sorry I wish I could edit that. My phone scrambled everything.

I think it is unfair to dismiss payers dating it could be innocent. You can't totally judge a situation like that from a few seconds of silent footage and the camera angle would not have been what the man saw.

turgiday - Are you referring to me?

I seriously over reacted once to a man talking to my child in a park. That's another story, but I assumed the very worst and I was wrong.
I'm trying to see the good in people. And you can't assume anything without far more evidence that that.
But I am well aware that there are lots of dangerous and scary people out there too. Very hard not be paranoid when it comes to my children.

I agree actually turgiday but I don't think that's happening here. People just want to know if there's more to it before embarking on a witch hunt.

I'm not posting anymore. My phone keeps autocorrecting after a delay when I'm typing the next bit

If the other footage, if it exists, shows an innocent picture then they wouldnt bas trying to find him

Not necessarily. Take my hypothetical scenario above if man says "toddler was previously walking along with a dark-haired man in a red anorak and a woman with curly hair wearing jeans and a stripy top, and I thought he was their son. Then they turned off into WH Smiths and he kept going, so I thought he'd just not noticed they'd gone and went to get him and show him where they'd gone." the police can check the footage and see that, yes, there was a couple answering that description, and the toddler was with them in these previous CCTV shots, and they did enter WH Smiths at the time in question. But there isn't blanket coverage of the whole shopping centre this would have to be pieced together from dozens of different sources and you don't know what his explanation is going to be until you ask him.

I'm not saying that he's innocent. It looks bloody suspicious. But then CaisleanDraiochta's actions would have looked bloody suspicious on CCTV too, without the benefit of her explanation.

I think it looks like he thinks the boy is with another parent and he moves quickly to stop the boy going into the shop. I'd be very surprised if it wasn't innocent. I feel quite sorry for the elderly man, I can imagine my Grandad would have tried to help and not done it in quite the right way. I am also surprised at such a young toddler just walking behind his mum like that, mine is nearly three and I wouldn't let him walk behind me in a shop.

I'm not posting anymore. My phone keeps autocorrecting after a delay when I'm typing the next bit

It is not about defending Men Littleducks, it is about looking at a situation not just from the viewpoint of the cctv camera and having a more rounded view of the world and realise that events look differently from different visual and emotional angles.

It is very much a mug situation. One person is sitting and can see a handle of the mug, they swear blind they see a mug with a handle. Another person is sitting where they can't see a handle of the mug it is obscrued from their view, they swear blind the mug has no handle. Neither are lying, they just need to get up and look from the other person's perspective.

I must admit I'm a bit torn. The man does seem to 'swoop in' rather quickly to lead the boy away. However, the Customer Care desk is, if i remember correctly, very close to the entrance to Boots where this incident happened. He may have been innocently worried about the child and taking him to the desk.
I find it strange that the mum doesn't run in and grab the boy more quickly too. If you were seriously worried that he was going to harm your child surely you would run, grab him straight away and start yelling at anyone nearby to help.

I don't think anyone is defending the man, it's just not enough to decide it is a 'paedophile snatching a child' scenario based on such a short clip. Though of course it could well be.

Just a thought, but if the man is quite elderly, it could be something to do with dementia- my friend's gran was finally put into a care home, after she pushed someone else's baby in their buggy around Tesco for five minutes, while the mum was browsing clothes. She thought she was 25 and it was her baby DD.

I don't think it looks that suspicious. The mother isn't paying any attention to her son in the clip until she is in the shop and has turned around. The boy is all over the place and if he has been doing this for a while before the camera shot, without mum paying attention someone would be hard pressed to say he was with the blonde. The man gesticulates to the mother about something to his left-security, information point-who can tell from this shot? The mother seems a bit laissez faire about keeping the little lad near her and I would interpret this as a concerned grandad who has seen what looks likes a toddler wandering around a busy shopping centre, who decides to get some help.

I agree totally Effective but understand you probably couldn't understand that from the posts.

yy to dementia as well
My nearly 90 yo grandmother thought my baby DD1 was her baby girl (who had been stillborn 65 yrs before). Incredibly upsetting.

Just watched the clip. That man swoops in very quickly without even looking for a possible parent. He also walks back in the direction that he came from, not just continuing on his way which seems a bit dodgy to me.

As said unthread the context around the footage would be useful, but surely the mother was concerned enough to report this and so id be interested to know what he said to the child and also to the mother. It does look like something the mother heard him say prompted her to turn around.

surely the mother was concerned enough to report this doesn't mean a thing. Plenty of people on this thread are concerned enough to assume that the man was up to no good.

I'm withholding judgement and presuming that the man is innocent. I'll be interested to hear the outcome of the interview.

Posted too soon. He could have said 'are you lost?' or similar, or could have said 'do you want a sweetie?' or something that sounded a bit sinister.

Why presume the man is innocent? Surely if you feel like that it makes more sense to say you presume we don't know if he is innocent or not?

The man does swoop in quickly. I assume the woman is asking him what he is doing, rather than just turning around and assuming he is snatching her son. She is doing what you are all mostly doing, not assuming straight away that he is a paedophile.

only lovers i agree in the sense that no conclusions can be drawn from a few seconds of cctv footage BUT from the footage it does look like the child is out of the mothers sight for less than 2 seconds and he already had approached the child, grabbed his hand and started to walk away. If i was approaching a lost child, in 2 seconds i would probably have only got as far as bending down to speak to the child. Looks very dodgy and certainly requires investigation.

turgiday, I'm presuming he's innocent because 'presumed innocent' is the basis of our legal system and it seems to me like a good guide. I'd rather presume him innocent until or unless we know otherwise than jump to the worst conclusions.

And as for the wording, you can't presume not to know whether someone is innocent – you can either presume someone is innocent or presume they're guilty, or you can not know either way.

We are not actually a court of law. And we don't use these standards when judging women on MN. I have seen many mothers judged very harshly on much more shaky evidence than this. But when it is a man...

Nobody has judged the Mother of the child or commented if they would behave as she has done, just saying.

It is a bit odd that he went to lead him away. If I found a lost child I'd crouch down to their level and say "Where is your mummy or daddy? Are you with a grown up?" and see if they pointed anybody out first. You definitely wouldn't want to lead them away, maybe if they couldn't see them you might walk up and down or to an information desk or something, but definitely not straight away.

I don't know that he necessarily said anything to the child (obviously you can't tell because no sound) but she just looked back to check where the child was. Although her face is blurred you can see that she looks in the child's direction about two seconds before when he was walking the other way to check he was following her into the shop. I often used to walk with DS like this. They're sort of behind you but you're aware of their whereabouts. If the man hadn't intervened the toddler would still have been following her, I expect she looked back because he didn't come up beside her or she didn't hear his footsteps, or she was just generally monitoring where he was. I definitely used to do lots of small glances to check where DS was rather than full on turning around.

It looks like the man looks around first when she shouts so I expect she said something general like "Excuse me, that's my son!" rather than saying her child's name. She might have been calm in order not to scare her child.

Do we know that she reported it? I don't think it says it was her in the article. It might have been someone else or even security staff.

He could have had good intentions but if he did he still acted irresponsibly. It would have been better to stay where the child was and ask him directly "Have you lost your mummy?"