So my wife and I were in the right place right time today and confronted a child predator.
We are vacationing in Florida this week. We were letting the kids play around the green space in Seaside when this younger man came and started talking to my boys. Harmless looking. After we saw my son start to chase this young man like tag, alarm bells went off and mama bear swooped into action, she ran down there and asked what the guy was doing. He said laughingly he had missed his workout today and asked the kids if they wanted to make a $100 and chase him around like tag. Mama was having none of that and ran the guy off.
I finally come out of the coffee shop and get brought up to speed on the situation and said no no we need to find this guy. So I walk around for awhile until he finally comes out of this ice cream shop. In my best manners I asked him what TF is his situation. A flustered response from this cat and I quickly realize this guy isn’t right, but he’s smart, he’s preying. He hides in plain sight, finds a group of kids, targets the outlier child that is a little insecure of himself, and tempts him away from the pack. We tell him what he’s doing is a probably a crime, and certainly was out of line and starting something he didn’t want rectified by these parents, and he reiterated he was committing no crime, alarm bell #2 (he knows to keep the situation at arms length). I tell him to piss off. Wife photographs him.
Walking away I find my wife alerting some restaurant owners and they get security involved. While we wait for police to arrive I decide to go do a little detective work and go into the ice cream shop. I ask the employees if they’ve seen anything strange out of that guy. They quickly said “oh yea” he was there last night talking to 10 teenage or younger boys sharing high-school Harry stories and trying to buy them ice cream. After one boy got uncomfortable he called security and they ran this guy off.
I walk out of the store and another man said “hey I saw you talking to that guy, he said something inappropriate to my daughter and I about whipped his arse right on the spot.”
Well the sheriffs department is on this one now and I expect this gets resolved, turns out he is a Hurricane ida evacuee from last month.
TLDR; parents please watch your kids. Some sick freaks out there.