Monday, December 18, 2006

Santa busted

He's just a 'jolly ole elf':
'Santa' charged with kidnapping girl

AP Photo: This booking photo released by the Lexington County Sheriff James R. Metts on Monday, Dec....

2 hours, 14 minutes ago

COLUMBIA, S.C. - A 55-year-old man dressed as Santa Claus forced an 8-year-old girl to ride in his motorcycle's sidecar for several minutes and was charged with kidnapping, authorities said.

The girl, of Augusta, Ga., and her family stopped at a convenience store off Interstate 20 on Sunday night when they noticed John Michael Barton, dressed in a Santa Claus suit, refueling his motorcycle, police said.

Barton asked the children to come over and look at a stuffed Rudolph he had in his sidecar. Then, he started up his motorcycle and drove away with the 8-year-old girl, authorities said. (link)

Just because it's Christmas it's still not a good idea to take strange kids into your motorcycle side-car. They're not too sure what the deal behind this was, but so far they are treating it as a kidnapping. This old guy has been giving rides to other kids, but the kicker is the father had to do 80mph to catch 'Santa'. Seems a bit too fast to be just giving the kid a treat.

Hopefully they can find out exactly what's going on here. Just from reading the article the old man may be a little senile. While I feel sorry for people that lose their minds (or begin to), it's hard to be too lenient with a man that kidnaps a little girl and leads the father on a chase of speeds up to 80.
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Reason for speed

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