VISTA, Calif. — Jennifer Lawson has heard the criticism on social media. Still, the Vista mom believes she did the right thing.
“I didn’t know what he was going to do, and I wasn’t going to sit in the car to see what he was going to do,” the mother of two told FOX 5 Friday.
Lawson and her fiancé were in their SUV Saturday with her 2-year-old and 10-month-old baby in the backseat in the Costco parking lot. She said as she started to pull out of a parking spot, a man walked up to the car.
“He looks in my window, and I see him look in and open the door,” Lawson said. “As soon as he touched the handle, I jumped out and pushed him a few times. I’ve never been so scared in my life. I didn’t know this guy’s intentions.”
A crowd gathered and a confrontation between the man and the child’s father got physical, deputies said. An off-duty sheriff’s employee and other witnesses intervened, separating them until deputies from the Vista Sheriff’s Station arrived.
Some people on social media haven’t been so understanding after the mom was seen on video jumping out of the car and getting in the suspect’s face. Lawson said she read comments from people questioning if the guy accidently opened the wrong car door or thought it was an Uber.
“I get that. If he made a mistake, it was a bad mistake,” she said. “But deep down, I don’t think it was a mistake. He looked in every window. I play hide-and-seek with him through the windows and you can clearly see in my car. So, he looked in the window and saw him.”
According to the arrest report, the suspect is 37-year-old Adam Glavinic and he was under the influence of a controlled substance. He was booked on suspicion of attempted kidnapping with charges pending from the District Attorney’s Office.
“I don’t know what he was going to do and I wasn’t going to sit in the car and see what he was going to do and neither was my fiancé,” Lawson said. “So that’s what we had to do as parents. We had to do everything to protect our kid.”
So far, Glavinic has not been charged with attempted kidnapping.
“In this case, based on the video and other evidence gathered as part of our investigation, the Vista Sheriff’s Station believes there is no ongoing threat or danger to our community’s children related to this incident,” the sheriff’s department said Thursday in a news release. “The District Attorney’s Office is conducting a thorough and objective review of the evidence before making a determination about potential prosecution.”