When we think about the potential dangers our children might face, we consider the moments when they’re away from us. For the most part, we assume that not only can we protect them when they’re in our presence, we also suspect that no one would try to harm them when they see our children with us, their parents.
But one family in New York learned that this is not always the case. A stranger walked past a father and his two children and tried to snatch the child away from his grasp.
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A man in a ski mask tried to grab a 6-year-old from his father.
This past Saturday, a man named Zalman, and his two sons, were walking to the Shabbat meal in their Hasidic Jewish community in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, according to Israel National News, when a man in a black ski mask allegedly grabbed the 6-year-old.
The man pulled the boy so hard, he hoisted him up into the air. “The whole thing took like two seconds,” Zalman explained. “I turned around to him, I guess I punched him, and he just left the kid. The only thing I was thinking that he tried to kidnap the kid, and we know how it could end if he had succeeded.”
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The man was arrested the next day.
When her family returned home, the children’s mother learned what had transpired. “They told me ‘Mommy, someone tried to grab me!’ and I was petrified. The minute Shabbat was over I called Shomrim (Jewish civilian patrols) and the police, and they took care of it very fast. We are very thankful for the NYPD and for the Shomrim.”
The police came to the family’s home, asked questions and found the alleged attempted kidnapper the next day. Police arrested the man and charged on Sunday morning at around 1:40 a.m.
The family knows the man.
Stephen Sowe, 28, was charged with attempted kidnapping, harassment, and endangering the welfare of a child, according to The Sun. The man was allegedly the family’s neighbor.
The child’s mother, Bayla, said they know Sowe and that he has never been a problem before. “He’d always hold the door, he always was nice,” she told New York-based ABC7. Other neighbors claimed he was having a bad day on the day of the incident.
This was not the only family he allegedly attacked that day.
Bayla says she is proud of her husband and son for hanging on to one another and not letting go. Sadly, their family was not the only one to experience this type of terror.
“I know that he attacked a few people on the same day,” Zalman told Israel National News. He says he doesn’t want his children to believe the incident was a hate crime. “The minute the kids start to feel that it was a hate crime, they’ll be scared to go anywhere,” Zalman said. “I want them to feel like the guy just wasn’t normal, that’s it.”
Bayla shared that her son will be going to therapy. Her family is also hoping for justice in court.
