Holly MatkinWarner Robins – The Good Samaritan who intervened in a vicious assault on a five-year-old boy by holding a suspect at gunpoint said the child told him afterwards that he thought he was going to die.
“He said that the man was gonna beat him and leave him for the animals,” Kelcey Willis told WGXA.
The incident occurred at the Walmart store located at 2720 Watson Boulevard at approximately 2:07 p.m. on Nov. 6, the Warner Robins Police Department (WRPD) said in a press release.
Willis said he had stopped by the business to get his vehicle oil changed.
“As buddy was filling us in to get our oil change, we heard a little kid screaming,” he told WGXA.
Willis said he then noticed a man grabbing a young child out of a car and taking him behind the store to a wooded area.
“We thought he was using the bathroom, but it took him way too long to come back from behind the building,” he told WGXA. “The screaming kept getting louder and louder and that didn’t sit right with us.”
That’s when he heard the child making a terrified plea.
“I heard the kid screaming, ‘Please don’t beat me!’ so that’s when my instinct kicked in some more,” Willis told WGXA. “I sped on up to go get that kid.”
The Good Samaritan grabbed his gun and headed into the woods.
“By the time I came around the corner, he was on top of him choking him,” he recalled. “At that point, I just put my gun up and held him at gunpoint and grabbed the kid.”
Several other witnesses helped rescue the boy and kept the suspect at bay until police arrived at the scene, WGXA reported.
They arrived to find Willis still holding 67-year-old Haimnarine Doobay at gunpoint, the WRPD said in a press release.
Doobay was subsequently arrested on charges of cruelty toward a child and aggravated assault.
WRPD Lieutenant Eric Gossman said Doobay and the child are related to one another, but the exact nature of their relationship was not immediately released.
Police said the victim was placed into the care of the Houston County Sheriff’s Office Juvenile Division.
No further information was immediately released.
Willis said he is thankful the child is safe and that he was able to help get him out of a horrific situation.
“If I ain’t step in and I ain’t react as fast as I did, the kid would probably be dead … He would’ve choked the child cold,” Willis told WGXA. “Once we got the kid out the woods, he said the man was going to beat him and leave him for the animals.”
