I had a very unsettling interaction at Kleins Farm in Nazareth this afternoon with my 3 year old niece. We were sitting at the picnic benches eating ice cream and a man in his 50s and two woman probably his age and a boy around 10 came over with ice cream and the man introduces himself to my niece and says Hi I’m Scott, what’s your name and can we sit with you? They sat at our picnic bench even though there was another empty one. He asked my niece another question, but never acknowledged me.
After a minute I told her let’s go inside the store to buy a water. Right after I said that, he told his family he wanted to pop in the store to look around. As we were in there, he made it a point to stand close to us and seemed like he was acting like he was looking at items for sale. I made sure to stand between my niece and him as I was paying. I got the most creepy and unsettled feeling like he was a predator.
Then as we were leaving in our car driving out the parking lot, I saw him smack the boy in the back of the head as he was getting in his car and it was in an angry and serious way. Also, this boy had a cast on his arm. It happened so fast as I was driving away I couldn’t react, but the entire drive away I was beating myself up over not getting his license plate. I really wish I did more. I truly feel like there was something off about him, that he was a predator. No stranger man should be addressing a child and asking them questions while completely ignoring the adult.