Bizarre Arrests: Pregnant Mom Arrested, Looses Child Over $5 Sandwich
Posted on: 10/25/2011
A post on popular parenting site babycenter has led to an unusual criminal case being in the limelight. A young couple was arrested by the police after a trip to the local Safeway with their daughter. Their daughter was also taken by child protective services. The charges? Theft of $5 worth of sandwiches.
According to the couple, they had walked to the grocery store with their three-year-old daughter. The woman, Nicole Leszczynski, is 30 weeks pregnant and says she was feeling faint after the walk. “We walked a long way to the grocery store and I was feeling faint, dizzy, like I needed to eat something so we decided to pick up some sandwiches and eat them while we were shopping,” she said. So she picked up a sandwich to munch while shopping. They brought their cart up to the register and purchase fifty dollars worth of groceries but forgot to tell the cashier about the sandwich.
“It was a complete distraction, distracted parent moment,” she says.
As they were leaving with their purchase store security stopped the couple and asked for thereceipt. Not seeing the sandwich, they called the manager. The couple offered to pay for the sandwich, but the manager insisted store policy was to call the police. The police arrested the pair and since the couple had no nearby family child protective services was called to take the three year old away.
Since the story has been circulating around and been picked up by larger media outlets, Safeway has offered an apology and requested that the police drop the charges. It is an interesting cautionary tale about how quickly an ordinary day can turn terribly wrong in an instant. Oh, and always pay for food before you eat it.
