PEMBROKE PINES, Fla. – Authorities accused a man of trying to yank a child from her stroller outside of a Pembroke Pines preschool — all in what appeared to be an attempt to use her as a human shield after someone pulled a gun on him.
According to police, just before noon Thursday, the girl’s mother had been pushing her outside of Peppermint Academy Preschool, located at 7753 Johnson St., when she saw three men arguing nearby.
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She tried to avoid the trio, but said one of the men pulled a gun in the fight, on a man police later identified as 41-year-old Joe Edward Ochoa, Jr.
Ochoa, of Heath, Texas, “rapidly approached” the woman and her child after they went to the front of the preschool for shelter, then “reached into the stroller” and tried to pick her up against her mother’s will, an arrest report states.
The report states the girl’s mother kept repeatedly trying to tell Ochoa to stop touching her daughter, but he persisted and eventually “held (the girl) while she was restrained in the stroller.”
The girl’s mother told officers that it appeared he was trying to use the little girl and her stroller as “a shield from the other suspects,” the report states.
Ochoa eventually let go and then ran towards the locked doors of the preschool, banging on them and “screaming to be let in while also pulling on the locked door handle,” police wrote.
After being denied entry, Ochoa ran away, according to police.
Officers later found Ochoa at the intersection of North University Drive and Johnson Street. They said they also found a clear bag containing methamphetamine among a bundle of clothes in his hands.
The woman would later identify him as the suspect.
As of Friday evening, Ochoa was being held in the Broward Main Jail on charges of kidnapping a child for ransom, reward, shield or hostage, battery, and methamphetamine possession.
He was being held on a $162,500 bond, according to jail records.
The arrest report doesn’t state whether authorities identified the man with the gun or if he’ll be facing charges.