Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

News

Child abduction rumours at Heaton Park

72 replies

SouthernComforts · 05/11/2017 23:03

Lots of tweets and Facebook posts being shared about a missing child at Heaton Park tonight..

MEN currently reporting unknown police incident and long delays leaving the park.

Anyone know if this is a hoax or what the incident is?

OP posts:
pisacake · 06/11/2017 01:29

"Thanks, I find it odd there's nothing on the BBC Homepage tbh."

They obviously don't think it's real.

Horsemad · 06/11/2017 01:40

Yes, possibly.

MrsOverTheRoad · 06/11/2017 01:48

Supt Arif urged people to avoid "speculating around the circumstances on social media"

....we need to leave well alone.

pisacake · 06/11/2017 01:49

yeah us and all the 50,000 other fuckwits on Facebook, good luck with that

Floralnomad · 06/11/2017 01:52

From what I can glean a security guard has reported a distressed child being put into the back of a car by a man , hardly a lot to go on . I thought the idea nowadays was to spread information quickly so if an actual parent has reported a child missing I can’t see why that info / name / photo isn’t out there by now .

HarveySchlumpfenburger · 06/11/2017 01:54

They can try I suppose. They might need stronger wording than that to even make a dent in the rumours and Chinese whispers on FB and Twitter.

pisacake · 06/11/2017 02:45

MEN saying it's bollocks

"LATEST: GMP have now confirmed that they have not had any reports of a missing child, but are continuing to investigate reports of a possible child abduction"

SantasLittleMonkeyButler · 06/11/2017 03:39

That sounds very positive then.

Thank fuck for that!

AstridWhite · 06/11/2017 03:56

It's possible the security guard saw an Asian man leaving with a distressed 'white' child and put two and two together and made 10.

He could be a relative or friend, a step father, she could be his mixed race daughter who presents as very white looking (it would have been dark and hard to tell exactly what her racial profile was, especially if she was bundled up in a big coat with a hood and no hair could be seen.)

Unless the police have actually spoken to parents who have confirmed their child is missing it may not be a hoax exactly, just a horrible misunderstanding.

But it's very difficult to know what to do for the best in these situations. When you have a very visceral reaction to something that seems very 'off' to you and you know that time is of the essence, you don't necessarily stop and calmly process all the many possible explanations for what you've seen - you just act on gut instinct.

Had they both been white or both been Asian I doubt many people would have looked twice, assumed they were father and daughter and put the child's distress down to a tired tantrum. But they could easily have been witnessing an abduction without realising it.

In the case of an Asian male and white child you would look twice. Not necessarily because the man is Asian but because the child appears to be white and therefore unlikely to be his child. If it was a white man and a brown skinned child that might still happen but most people will realise it's entirely possible that the dark skinned child could be mixed race with a white father.

If you witnessed this specific incident and chose, for reasons of political correctness to completely ignore the obvious racial difference between 'abductor' and 'victim' you risk allowing an abduction to happen before your eyes.

I think in that situation I'd rather be wrong about reporting a possible abduction than be wrong about choosing to ignore an actual abduction, because I didn't want to be accused of stereotyping or jumping to conclusions.

CherriesInTheSnow · 06/11/2017 04:43

I think the FB post does sound like shit stirring bullshit, to be honest. Awful how people do this.

However the BBC article says this was reported at 9:15. It has been taken off the BBC home page so I hoping they are speculating that it is just a rumour.

How terribly awful if it isn't, I couldn't imagine the horror for the parents if this has actually happened :( Luckily I highly doubt it though.

endedans · 06/11/2017 05:09

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-41881562

Nothing suspicious found and no child reported missing by a family. Thankfully

JonSnowsWife · 06/11/2017 05:57

Friend of mine was there and said their car was searched too, as was everyone else's.

If it's a hoax then that's just sick, especially considering the manforce they'd have used up from the police to conduct the searches. At a large gathering, when we're already on terror alert.

StealthPolarBear · 06/11/2017 06:35

How odd. Astrid that was my first thought but we probably shouldn't speculate

Battleax · 06/11/2017 10:40

They must know whether a security guard was the root of it or not.

lucylouuu · 06/11/2017 11:34

It’s a hoax. Police have said there’s no evidence of an abduction and the person who made the original facebook status has deleted the status. Glad it’s not true but also horrible thing to make up

Battleax · 06/11/2017 11:41

So all of that police manpower without a single human informant to be found!? Shock

Wow.

SouthernComforts · 06/11/2017 14:58

It goes to show how fast 'fake news' can spread in this day and age.

It seems odd that this search was launched without any parent/adult actually reporting their child missing?

OP posts:
HarveySchlumpfenburger · 06/11/2017 17:56

Not really. It's much better to act as though it is genuine until you are as sure as you can be that it is not true than to assume it's false and then for someone to report their child missing.

If they'd have let all the cars leave they'd have been heavily criticised if it turned out to be genuine.

ScaryMary81 · 06/11/2017 23:00

There has been a number of real attempted child snatches across Manchester in the last two months. All report a tanned man in a white van approaching children, all have managed to escape so far.

Three in my local area in the last month, including one of the same description this morning at a local primary school, so I think that may explain GMPs response.

SouthernComforts · 07/11/2017 00:05

ScaryMary a school in Rochdale? I got an email from the DC school about a man in a van this afternoon.

OP posts:
ScaryMary81 · 07/11/2017 00:52

Hey Southern, yes, worrying he/they tried at a local high school and now seem to be targeting primary schools.

Clawdy · 07/11/2017 18:00

I suspected the whole thing was fake from the start, as it sounded very like a tale told to me by a gullible friend last year, which was about a girl being abducted in John Lewis. It turned out to be a hoax, very similar to a popular urban myth.

New posts on this thread. Refresh page
Swipe left for the next trending thread