Passing
motorist protects boy from stranger
|
by
Mark Vasto
Landmark reporter
A 12-year-old Kansas City area boy’s
offer of assistance to a stranger nearly took a turn
for the worse, at least until David Taylor took a U-turn.
Riding his bicycle to the Plaza Middle
School in the Park Hill School District at around 7:45
am, the child came across Mohinder Singh, 53, who was
removing items from telephone poles and struggling to
carry some items in his arms. When the child offered
to help, Singh starting acting friendly towards the
boy – a little too friendly according to the Platte
County Sheriff’s Department.
“When (The victim) asked if he could
assist him, the man…put his arm around him,”
said Captain Frank Hunter of the Platte County Sheriff’s
department. “The juvenile then separated himself
from him and told (Singh) that he just wanted to go
to school.”
David Taylor, a 45-year-old salesman from
Kansas City, was driving by the intersection of Hwy.
9 and Winter Ave. when he noticed the situation.
“I was on my way to work and I saw
an older gentleman and a young boy standing there, with
a bike on the ground,” Taylor recounted. “It
didn’t look proper. It didn’t feel right.
So I turned around.”
When Taylor approached the two, he asked
the child if everything was ok, and the child said that
it was. Taylor, himself a father of a Plaza student,
wasn’t convinced.
“He said it in a way that made it
seem like it wasn’t ok,” Taylor said, adding
that he directed the child to pick up his bike and be
on his way.
After the boy pedaled off, Taylor questioned
Singh about his actions but he refused to talk to Taylor.
Now certain that something was wrong, Taylor made another
U-turn, following after the boy. He said that when he
got to him, the boy wanted to tell him what had happened,
but Taylor wouldn’t hear of it.
“He wanted to talk about things,
but I told him I wasn’t the person to tell,”
Taylor said. “I told him to go to school, not go
to class, but go directly to the principal and tell
him exactly what happened.”
Confident that the boy would listen, Taylor
made yet another U-turn, and called 911. Just as he
was talking to dispatch, a Platte County Sheriff’s
Deputy drove onto the scene. After Taylor described
events, the deputy conducted a background check on Singh
and learned that he was a registered sex offender: Singh
had been convicted of indecent exposure in California
years earlier.
Singh now sits in a Platte County jail
cell.
Authorities initially placed Singh under
a 20-hour hold, and late Tuesday it was announced he
is being charged with third degree assault. He is being
held in lieu of a $10,000 cash bond.
Taylor, an assistant scoutmaster with
the Boy Scouts, credits the scouts' youth training program
with making him aware of the situation. He said the
program trains all scoutmasters to recognize signs of
abuse.
“We’re taught that if something
doesn’t look right, just stop the situation and
then worry about what’s going on. I saw something
wasn’t right and I just stopped it.”
Taylor said that he isn’t a hero,
however.
“(The boy) is the hero,” Taylor
said. “What he did was very brave. He did what
a proper adult asked him to do. He made the right choice.”
