A restaurant worker asked if a boy needed help. His stepfather was just convicted of child abuse.
A Florida man was convicted of child abuse charges after a restaurant employee last year showed the man’s stepson a note asking if he needed help.
Timothy Lee Wilson, 36, was convicted of two counts of false imprisonment on a child under the age of 13, three counts of aggravated child abuse with a weapon, four counts of aggravated child abuse, and one count of child neglect.
The charges come after a woman, Flaviane Carvalho, saw a child with bruises on his face and arms who was sitting at a table she was waiting on in a Florida restaurant on New Year’s Day in 2021. At the time, she also noted the then 11-year-old boy was not allowed to order any food.
“Do you need help?” Carvalho wrote on a piece of paper, holding the note out of view of the adults at the table before the boy signaled that he did need help.
“When I looked to the boy, I saw a big scratch between his eyebrows,” Carvalho said in a video released by the Orlando Police Department. “I started observing them and I could (see) that he was super quiet and sad.”
She called 911, and police officers arrived and spoke to the boy, who said his stepfather, Wilson, had repeatedly beat him. USA TODAY previously reported that Wilson was arrested on a child abuse charge before being arrested again days later on additional child abuse and neglect charges.
'Do you need help?': Florida restaurant manager's note helps child escape 'torture,' police say
New York: Police seek information on daycare worker charged with possessing child pornography
Law enforcement officials said the boy had been “tortured, maliciously punished, and deprived of food and water for days at a time.” He was also “kept in a separate hotel room used for storage, away from Mr. Wilson, the victim’s mother, and (a) younger sibling," according to a Monday news release from a state attorney’s office.
The boy “routinely was deprived of food and beverages, was made to do military-style exercises, hung upside down from a door by his neck and feet, and at one point, handcuffed to a dolly cart on Christmas Day,” according to the news release.
Wilson will be sentenced on August 19. The boy’s mother, Kristen Swann, is facing a slate of felony abuse charges. She has pleaded not guilty, according to online court records.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Florida man convicted of child abuse after worker helped boy with note
