We wrote about this incident in the article “Aggressive Father in a Supermarket”. The incident took place on Sunday (August 28), and an eyewitness reported it to us.
The probably intoxicated father of a three-year-old boy began verbally abusing his son in extremely vulgar terms. At the store exit, according to the witness, the father allegedly kicked the child because he did not want to leave the store and had stopped by the colorful toy cars.
The store security staff did not react to the situation, despite one customer's request that they somehow stop the aggressive man. The father and son left the passageway. The witness claims that the security guard refused to intervene, explaining that he was not obliged to leave the store building and intervene outside.
The woman did not know what had happened outside the store, but after a while another man pushed the aggressive father back into the passageway. It was this man who contacted our editorial office and described how he reacted to the aggressive father's behavior.
He Hit Him Against a Pillar and Put Him in an Arm Lock
On Sunday, Artur went to the store with a female friend. They were entering when the aggressive father and his son passed them. “I noticed a man saying to the child, ‘Go, you cunt, or I’ll fucking hit you,’” Artur recalls. “As they were leaving through the sliding doors, the father kicked the child in the kidney. I wanted to react immediately, but my friend stopped me,” he adds.
There was a commotion in the store; someone suggested calling the police, but no one was particularly eager to intervene. Artur noticed that when the word “police” was mentioned, the father began to walk away. He then decided to step in.
“I decided that the man had to be detained until the police arrived,” he says. “I approached the father and stood in front of him, gently pushing him back inside the store. But he wanted to push me away and get past me. So I grabbed him by the throat and pushed him against the pillar in front of the Carrefour entrance. I put him in an arm lock and pushed him into the store.”
Only then did the supermarket staff react. They called the police and reported… two men fighting inside the store.
The Hero Becomes the Aggressor
As Artur forcibly pushed the aggressive father into the store, the entire scene was noticed by a customer who had just arrived. To him, the situation looked completely different. In his view, Artur had attacked an innocent person, and he decided to help the alleged victim. “He started shouting that I should let the detained man go,” Artur recalls. “A woman who had seen the father insulting his child defended me. She quickly explained that I was helping and that the aggressive man was the one I had detained.”
The aggressive father was placed in an isolation room, where he waited for the police to arrive. The customer who had suspected Artur of attacking an innocent victim apologized to him after learning the whole story.
“In my opinion, the police were not in much of a hurry,” Artur says. “From time to time, I looked into the room where the father was sitting. In my view, you could smell alcohol on him.”
When the police officers arrived, they took the father to the car. The children also got into the vehicle with him. Artur watched the entire situation because he cared deeply about the boy and girl. “I thought they were taking them to a care facility,” Artur says. “I also wanted to give a statement, so I waited with my ID card. Only through an article on Istotne.pl did I learn that I had been a witness who ran away and did not want to say anything.”
According to Artur, when the father was asked whether he considered kicking children normal, he allegedly replied that if they deserved it, he kicked all three of his children.
Witnesses Gave Statements; the Family Is Under Supervision
It was while gathering material for the article that the police spokesperson learned about the father's aggressive behavior toward the children. The intervention undertaken by police officers a month earlier on Sunday concerned two adult men who had started a fight inside the supermarket.
We contacted our witnesses and encouraged them to report the incident at the police station. Thanks to their information, a procedure aimed at protecting the children in the family was launched.
A district police officer visited the family's home and collected all available information from the neighbors about the aggressive father's family. Unfortunately, their descriptions of his everyday behavior toward the children confirmed that violence was occurring in the family. A Blue Card procedure was therefore initiated, and the family is being monitored.
Will this change the father's attitude toward his own children? It will certainly deprive him of the confidence that he is above the law and can do whatever he wants to his own child. What is sad is that, according to the witness, his son and daughter, waiting for their father outside the supermarket, appeared to regard kicking and verbal humiliation as entirely normal behavior by an adult toward a child. “They asked me where I had taken Daddy,” Artur says. “They were not afraid or missing their father. It simply looked as though insulting and kicking them was not a reason for their father to be punished.”
(information: Grażyna Hanaf)