On a Sunday afternoon in South Carolina, a teenage girl ran back to her dad’s table at Cracker Barrel to tell him that a strange man had poked his head under her toilet cubicle to look at her. Then, her dad and some of his friends found the man and restrained him. It has since come out that the man was a convicted s*ex offender.
WSPA 7 says that the event happened at a franchise on Duncan’s Main Street. Chief Carl Long of the police said the girl, 15, was in town for a softball tournament. While she was in the bathroom, she first saw something move in the corner of her eye near her feet. Then she saw that it was the head of a man looking up at her.
The girl’s father was so angry about what his daughter had just told him that he was able to ask a female worker to get the man out of the toilet. It was even worse because his daughter wasn’t the only girl in the bathroom. This made it hard to tell if this was a one-time thing or not.
Someone who saw the girls said, “I’ll never forget how well they were taken care of.” “It was traumatic for them.”
Since then, the criminal has been named as Douglas Lane, 53, of Charlotte, North Carolina. As soon as the teenage girl told her dad what had happened, he tried to run away. Chief Long told him, though, that Lane had a fight with the teen’s father at the entrance to the girls’ toilet.
“The guy came running, sprinting out the front door with a very bloody nose,” a witness said of the bad guy.
That person also said, “Everyone was yelling, ‘Get him!'” Catch him! “Do not let him get away.” Someone who helped hold Lane down was heard yelling at him, “I’m telling you, you wouldn’t walk away if that was my daughter.”
Fox 4 News says that after Lane left the restaurant, a group of dads followed him outside and tackled him to the ground. Some of Lane’s injuries were visible during the fight on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, but witness accounts suggest that he was punched at least once before he even got outside.
But the smart dads wanted to make sure the man got more than just jail time, so they pinned Lane to the ground until the police arrived. Then they found out that Douglas Lane had been a known se*x offender in North Carolina since 2004, when he was found guilty of peeking into a toilet while someone was using it.
The disturbing government records showed that Lane’s victims were eight and nine years old at the time. After four years, he was found guilty of the same crime, but this time the victim was an adult. Also, in 1997, South Carolina’s se*x offender registry listed Lane’s other crimes, such as peeping, voyeurism, and aggravated voyeurism. He also didn’t sign up as a s*ex offender in 1999.
Lane was having marijuana with him when he was caught in his most recent arrest.
The registered s*ex offender is now officially charged with voyeurism, simple possession of marijuana, and possession of drug paraphernalia. This may not seem like a big deal, but it is. Lane got a $2,000 surety bond and was forced to wear GPS monitoring at his bond hearing on Monday.
He has to go to court on November 12, 2020, at 9:00 a.m.
