A Florida mother was charged with child abuse after she let her 11-year-old son drive a golf cart at a luxury resort hotel on vacation in North Carolina.
Julie Mall said that she broke the law when she let her son drive the golf cart, but she thought it would be fine as her husband was in the front seat with him. The ride was short and on a clear path, she said, according to The Orlando Sentinel.
Police officer James Hunter saw the boy behind the wheel at the resort on Bald Head Island, North Carolina. He pulled the cart over and after that, the situation escalated, Mall said.
Mall and her family said Hunter was aggressive at the start, accusing her of being drunk and he also threatened to take away her children. The Bald Head Village police department said she was drunk, disorderly, and resisted. However, a sobriety test wasn’t administered, the Charlotte Observer reported.
Mall, who said she had been vacationing in Bald Head for years, was charged with child abuse.
“Immediately he started berating us,” Mall told the Observer. “He was saying, ‘How old is this kid?’ ‘Are you guys drunk?’ ‘I could write you up for child abuse,’” she recalled.
