Attalla, Alabama police announced that they had found the man accused of trying to kidnap a child from a Walmart. The mother accompanied the child at the store and witnessed the man’s failed abduction attempt.
The mother, Tiffany Rush, said she became suspicious of the man after he gave her young son a high-five while they were at a Walmart in Attalla. She told the police that she caught him attempting to take the boy from her shopping cart later.
Rush said that she was busy at the self-checkout line at a Walmart when her son, Mason, 3, started throwing a tantrum. A man standing in front of her began to give the boy high fives, and the mother assumed the man was being nice and trying to calm down the three-year-old.
Rush said she was okay with him high-fiving her son, but she kept her eyes on him.
The situation took a weird turn when Rush and her son were leaving the store. According to Rush, the man took the boy out of her shopping cart and put him into his cart. He then reportedly told the child that they were going to his 18-wheeler.
Rush, seemingly confused about what had just happened, grabbed her son back, and the man then rushed toward a truck.
According to Rush, she didn’t at first register if the man was playing with her and her son, but she felt as if he was trying to kidnap the boy.
“You don’t touch someone’s kids like that,’’ she said. “I couldn’t believe it.”
Still trying to process what could have potentially been an abduction, Rush said that it was a terrifying experience and that she had four other kids and had never had that happen before.
The mom of five said that the ordeal felt like a scene from a television show.
Another woman who witnessed the incident escorted her to her vehicle and told her to report the incident to the police.
Rush went to the Attalla Police Department and reported the attempted kidnapping. She said the police at the department did not take her seriously, but they said they would investigate the incident and posted the man’s picture, retrieved from security footage, on Facebook.
The Attalla Police Department released a statement saying they received a report of a man who had attempted to kidnap a child by taking him from his mother’s shopping cart to his own cart at around noon on Thursday, December 8.
According to the statement, police identified the man as a truck driver for an Illinois-based trucking company. They said they identified him after reviewing hours of security footage. They were working with various state agencies to locate the man so they could interview him.
Police later announced that they had contacted the truck driver, who had driven back to Attalla from Chattanooga, and investigators interviewed him. The department said they would turn over all charges against the truck driver to the prosecutor’s office.