ORLANDO, Florida – A waitress worried that a boy may be being abused secretly showed him tickets to see if he needed help, reports say.
When Flaviane Carvalho showed a note that said “Do you need help?” To the boy, he nodded. That’s when Carvalho, manager and server at Mrs. Potato Restaurant, called the Orlando Police Department, reports the Orlando Sentinel.
Now the police are crediting Carvalho for saving the boy from abusive parents, according to USA Today.
“‘Abuse,’ I say lightly,” said Detective Erin Lawler on Thursday, according to Sentinel. “It was torture.”
The 34-year-old boy’s stepfather, Timothy Wilson II, was arrested on charges of child abuse and neglect the night the waitress called the police, according to an arrest statement. The child’s mother, 31, Kristen Swann, 31, who was also at the restaurant, was arrested a week later for child neglect.
Police say the incident occurred at the restaurant on January 1, reports clickorlando.com. The boy was at the restaurant with his stepfather, mother and younger sister.
Carvalho said he noticed that the boy had scratches and bruises, and that he was the only one who did not receive a food order.
“When I looked at the boy, I saw a big scratch between his eyebrows,” Carvalho said in a video released by OPD. “I started watching them and I could (see) that he was super quiet and sad.” She says she first showed him a sign asking if he was okay, then another asking if he needed help.
Sentinel reports that the boy was examined in a hospital and had bruises on his eyelids, earlobes and arms. He was also 20 pounds underweight.
Police told Sentinel that the boy said his parents suspended food as a punishment and would also make him exercise excessively. The boy said he was hung upside down on a door tied by his ankles and neck, and that he was beaten by objects and fists. He would also have been handcuffed to a moving doll.
“That child was destined to be killed,” Deputy Orlando Rolón told Sentinel. “This is how the injuries were serious. This is how horrible the memory of the abuse that the child shared with us is. “