Facebook post about attempted kidnapping at Cape Cod Mall inaccurate, police said
HYANNIS — A widely shared Facebook post describing an attempted kidnapping by a sex offender at the Cape Cod Mall was inaccurate, Barnstable police said.
On July 18, a now-deleted Facebook post said two girls at the mall thought they were being followed by a man. The girls went into a store where the store owner called the police, the post said.
According to Barnstable police Lt. Mark Mellyn, that is where the accuracy of the post ended.
The Facebook post claimed the man that was following the two girls was a sex offender, and that when police searched his car, they found implements that suggested his goal was kidnapping the girls.
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In reality, the man was not arrested, and Barnstable police did not search his car, Mellyn said.
Mellyn said he spoke with the person who wrote the largely incorrect post and requested that person take it down. The original poster confirmed with the Times that they were asked by the police department to remove the post.
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The department had been receiving phone calls and inquiries on their Facebook page about the alleged foiled kidnapping due to the original post, which had been shared over 800 times, Mellyn said.
"It was definitely an attention grabber," he said of the post. "This is the first time I've run across something like this. I couldn't believe it had been shared that many times."
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Barnstable police addressed the claims in a Facebook statement later that day.
The two girls did alert the police about a man they thought was following them, according to the department's statement. But the 34-year-old man in question said he was not following the girls and police did not arrest him. He was asked to leave the mall. Mellyn said the man is not a level 3 sex offender.
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The police department appreciates when citizens share PSAs, and doesn't want to discourage that, Mellyn said. The person who posted the original claims could have checked with the police before posting the information on Facebook, he said.
"No one (at the station) is going to say, 'No comment' and hang up," he said. "We would never try to shut down someone's PSA, especially concerning children. They could have said, 'Hey, I'm just trying to find out some facts about this thing I heard.'"
Sarah Carlon can be reached at: scarlon@capecodonline.com or on Twitter: @sarcarlon
This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Cape Cod: Facebook post about attempted mall kidnapping not right
