A concerned mother is warning families to be careful in Curtis Park after an apparent attempted robbery on a weekend earlier this month.
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“We want to say to parents: Hey, just because it was 1.30 on a Saturday afternoon doesn’t mean your kids are going to be safe,” the woman (who wants to remain anonymous) said.
She alleged a gang of kids, egged on by two adults, tried to steal her son and his friends’ bikes at 1pm on Saturday, October 20.
“These adults are using kids to commit the theft, because they know the children can’t be prosecuted,” she said. “That’s of concern.”
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The mother said her son, 10, and his friends were riding in the park when a group accosted them near the Marsh Street bridge underpass.
"I was sitting up on the grass bank, just watching my boys,” the mother said. “As they started to ride back towards me, I saw a bunch of young Indigenous children – they would have been between the ages of 5 and 10 – run out of the creek bed.
“They had big branches in their hands, and my son said afterwards they had rocks in their hands, as well.
“The two boys that my son was with managed to get through them, but then I saw they were trying to stop my son."
She believes the gang was trying to steal the boys’ bikes.
Her husband ran down to help, she said, and yelled at the group to stay away.
“As he almost got to them, I saw two adults stand up, who’d been sitting down in the reeds,” the mother said.
“The woman would have been in his early 50s, and the guy would have been in his late 20s. They started abusing my husband, telling him to keep away from the children, and to keep the dog away.
“The young guy was saying: ‘If you come near, I’m going to bash you; I’m going to come over and bash you; you’re lucky you didn’t touch those kids.’”
When her husband phoned the police, she said, the group hightailed it out of the park.
“I’m very glad we were there,” the mother said, “because I think they just would have ended up pulling our kids off their bikes, and taking them.”
The police were unable to arrive, the woman said, because they were occupied with other incidents.
“I really feel sorry for the police; they're trying to do a really hard job with what they've got, and they did the best thing they could. Unfortunately they couldn't respond, but it's not their fault.”
The police said they had not flagged the area as a particular concern.
"That area's not one we've had to increase patrols. Maybe historically we've had some problems with kids throwing rocks around near the bridge on the other side, but that was last year."