Photos of a man dragging a little girl by her hair throughout a Wal-Mart have gone viral.
Erika Burch was shopping at a local Wal-Mart in Cleveland, Texas, when she saw a man dragging a little girl by her hair up and down the aisles, the Daily Mail reported.
The man was the girl’s father. He was holding the little girl’s hair against the handle of a shopping cart. Burch said the girl kept asking him to stop.
“I promise I won’t do it again! Please stop!” Burch heard the little girl cry out.
Burch took photos of the man and told him to let the little girl go. She said the man told her to mind her own business. She responded by saying, “No I’m not! Right now this little girl is my business and you need to let her hair go now!”
Burch contacted an officer with the Cleveland Police Department. The department said they were aware of the incident.
“The Cleveland Police Department has received numerous calls in regards to a child having her hair pulled last night at Cleveland Wal-Mart,” the department wrote in a Facebook post. “We want to assure the community this case is currently being investigated by our Detective Division.
CPS has been contacted per our policy and is also investigating this case. A joint investigation is currently being conducted by both agencies.”
“Police are concerned at this time for the children who may be in the home with the dad who appeared to have been a little aggressive at the time,” Cleveland Police Chief Darrel Broussard told KTRK.
But Burch claims a sergeant told her the man “has the right to discipline his children.” She said the sergeant also told her that in order for the incident to be considered abuse, “there had to be bodily injury to the child.”
People are telling me I’m wrong for stepping up for this little girl, but you can discipline a child without dragging them by the hair on their head, especially in Wal-Mart,” Burch told KTRK. “I want help for that little girl so that she knows nobody is supposed to do that to her,” Burch said.
