A woman believed to be in her 60s is accused of punching a toddler in the head at Kmart because he was having a tantrum.
Police are investigating an allegation of assault. Mum of three, Rebecca claimed to The New Zealand Herald the woman had rammed a trolley into her two-year-old son’s head and she later discovered she had punched him in the head as well.
Rebecca said she had finished her shopping and was in a lengthy line at the checkout when her children, aged six, four and two, began to get restless.
As the wait continued, her youngest son became inconsolable and disintegrated into a full tantrum.
‘He wouldn’t usually behave like this, but I’ve got to admit – it was a really bad tantrum. Probably one of the worst I would have seen,’ she said.
When she finally got to the front of the queue, her son still in meltdown, an older woman appeared to have lost her patience with the young family.
Rebecca claims she turned around to see a trolley being pushed straight towards her son by a woman thought to be in her 60’s.
When the mother-of-three moved to stop the attack, the woman hurled abuse at her, telling Rebecca to ‘take him bloody home’.
After the alleged attack, Rebecca approached Kmart staff to see what could be done, and CCTV footage allegedly shows the woman appear to intentionally steer her trolley towards the young boy.
A store worker said they would review the footage further, file a complaint and see if they could find the woman, and Rebecca left the store.
Later that day, the man called Rebecca with more terrible news.
‘He said to me, “I’m sorry to do this to you… but I feel it’s the right thing to do”,’ she said.
‘We’ve reviewed the video footage in detail and we can see that she has actually punched your son in the head with quite some force, when your back was turned.’
A police constable visited Rebecca’s home to take her statement last night. She’d been told police were trying to track down the registration plate of the woman’s car, to identify her.
Rebecca said the store manager and police had both been incredibly helpful.
Her son was now fine, despite having two large bumps on his forehead.
However, she felt she had let him down.
“My job is to protect my children. To know that someone has punched him in the head and I haven’t reacted… he’ll be like ‘this is normal for people to do this to me’,” she said.
“I don’t want him to be physiologically damaged.”
Police confirmed they had spoken to Kmart and planned to review footage of the incident on the in-store cameras.
A police spokesman confirmed they had been notified of an alleged assault.
“Police will be looking into the matter and will be following up with the complainant.”
This is not on. Such terrible behaviour towards a young child!
Have you ever witnessed anything like this before?
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