A Florida woman who allegedly snatched a three-year-old boy from his fenced yard and ran down the street last week told police she shouldn’t be arrested because she “gave it back,” police bodycam footage shows.
‘I gave it back! I gave it back!” Pamela Monsalve, 39, insisted in the moments before police handcuffed her and booked her for kidnapping, the footage acquired by 7News reveals.
Neighbors sprang into action on Nov. 25 when they reportedly saw Monsalve reach over the fence of his Hallandale Beach home, scoop the toddler out of the yard and run away with him.
Good Samaritans alerted the boy’s mother and chased Monsalve down the street, forcing her to release the toddler.
They then called the police, who found her nearby.
Bodycam video captured her rambling, rambling statement: “He was outside, he was naked, he was with his shirt on, and his… everything was naked. And I asked the people around to call the police, and no one wanted to call the police, and I said to the little boy, ‘Where’s your mother?’ and he said ‘no,'” Monsalve orated.
At one point, an officer asks for the location of a “playground” she had mentioned.
“Outside the, the…outside the, uh…hotel,” Monclave replied.
“I got the little boy, and everyone was like, don’t take the little boy, and I thought, I gave him back to the mother,” she added. “I gave it back!”
Prosecutors don’t buy her “no harm, no foul” defense. Monsalve is being held without bond and charged with confining a child under 13 without parental consent. NBC6 reported.
Local police praised the boy’s rescuers for thwarting a potential tragedy.
“This is an example of ‘know thy neighbor’ and those neighbors were able to help prevent this child from being taken permanently,” Chief Megan Jones of the Hallandale Beach Police Department told NBC 6.
