Man who threatened to abduct children in custody

The man who threatened to abduct women and girls around Mandeville, Manchester, in a viral video, was taken into police custody yesterday.

Head of the Manchester Police Division, Superintendent Shane McCalla, said the man was captured on the outskirts of Mandeville on Monday afternoon.

In the video posted to social media site TikTok, the man stated that he was on a mission for the devil and said that he would be driving around and taking "all women and all girls", because the devil needed them for an experiment. In light of the threat, some parents of children who attend schools in the parish took no chances yesterday.

Dr Wendy Freckleton, who operates the D. Frank's Early Childhood Institution, told THE STAR that many parents opted to pick up their children, diverting from their regular routine of having an assigned taxi driver carry them.

"They said they just wanted to be certain that they would reach home safely," said Freckleton, who described the video as disturbing. She said parents who gathered at the school early Monday morning shared similar sentiments.

"It just goes to show that you can't be too safe as a community. Regardless of the mental condition of the person, it is really frightening that someone would really take the time to do a video like this and to release it to the public," Freckleton said.

Everton Tyndale, principal of Porus Infant School, asserted that the man might have "just been looking attention". However, Tyndale said that given the spate of crime and violence in the country, such actions ought not to be taken lightly.

"When things like these happen, we tend to blame the church for not praying enough, we blame the schools for not being vigilant enough, but whilst parenting does not come with a manual, it's serious thing. We have to think about how we're going to protect them," said Tyndale, who also pastors the Church of the Firstborn in Jamaica.

"Just like children have a right to a name, a right to schooling, etc. They have a right to be protected, and so we must do everything within our powers to protect them," he added.

In light of the man's claims to have been working for the devil, Custos of Manchester, Garfield Green, said that he has seen religious groups being formed in small numbers, and called for regulations and control of what groups are formed.

"Some could have grave negative influence on our people, especially those with a fickle mind, or those who vacillate," said Green.