This could have been me. What do you all see there?
Last Saturday afternoon, a man in a Tampa Bay Lightning shirt and khaki shorts waited in line at a Tampa Walmart. Beside him was a little boy wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the superheroes Captain America, Iron Man and the Hulk.
The man was white. The boy, 9, was black. He held the man’s hand as they waited to pay for their snack.
And that was enough to raise the suspicions of a woman, who was also black, in the Walmart that day.
She was concerned enough that she asked to take a picture of the boy, saying he looked like her grandson. As the pair left, she got the man’s license plate number and a description of his car.
She called 911 and described them down to the three superheroes and the color of the Hyundai.
According to the dispatcher’s notes, the woman said she thought it "suspicious" that a white man was holding hands with a black child. She said the man seemed in a hurry to get in the shortest check-out line. She said the boy kept looking around.
She said she thought the child was being kidnapped.
