My question involves criminal law for the state of: Florida




I am a 37 year old mom of three young children. They are 2, 3, and 4 years old. Yesterday (December 22) I took the three of them to a local theme park (Busch Gardens). We have season passes and go quite often. Yesterday was the first time we went alone. As we were leaving the park, I decided to enter a large gift shop to look for some last minute stocking stuffers for my husband. Only my 2yo was in a stroller, the older two were free, looking around at some of the items. I found some gifts, paid for them and left. About 100 feet out of the store, a man comes up to me and says "you need to follow me, we observed you putting items that you did not pay for into your stroller" WHAT?!?!?! I thought he was kidding and was not about to walk away with some strange man, and asked for ID. He showed me Busch Gardens security ID, so the children and I followed him to some behind the scenes part of the park where they had the police there. He sits me down and asks me if I bought anything while in the park today. I said I did, emptied my bags and produced receipts. Then he asked me to look in the back of my stroller. My stroller is a single Maclaren that has a very small, inaccessible basket unless you have your rider lean all the way forward. So I moved the baby forward and that's when I saw all the booty my children had put in the basket!! All together it totaled $57 worth of junk!! Candy, some crappy toys, just junk. Totally obvious that I did not "steal" any of this crap.

Well, they procedded to charge me with a Second Degree Petit. I hired a lawyer today who is pretty positive that the charges won't stick.

I am a stay-at-home-mother looking to return to work next year as a librarian and will need to undergo a background check. Will this bogus charge remain on my record regardless? Or if the case is thrown out, will the record vanish as well?

Anyone else have trouble at Busch Gardens or with your toddler stealing and you being the fall-gal (or fall-guy)??

But Bah-Humbug to Busch Gardens!!