WYOMING, Mich. (WOOD) — When two friends took a walk on the Kent Trails on Sunday, June 2, with their children, they never expected it to lead to a police report and viral video.
The men, who asked that WOOD TV8 not share their names due to the attention this is receiving online, say a cyclist hit one of them in the face, cursed at them and told them to put one of their children on a leash.
One of the men is from Kent County and had his 3-year-old son and 4-month-old daughter with him, while his friend, who was visiting from Detroit, had his two-year-old.
They were both pushing strollers, with the toddlers climbing in and out at various times. The father of the 3-year-old said they were on their way back home after stopping at a park, and the kids had “reached their limit.”
“We had made sure to stop for other people who were on bikes like we have been pretty aware of that. We had to pull over to the side, grab our kids, hold their hands just to make sure they go by. We had actually just done that for a couple of other cyclists when this man approached us,” the friend who recorded the video said.
That man rode up as the three-year-old sat down in the middle of the trail, according to the two friends.
“He said some profanities directed at the (boy), which seemed very inappropriate. We turned, and I threw up my arm and was like, ‘What’s that all about?’ Then that’s when he turned around and came back,” the one who recorded the video said.
According to the friends, the cyclist walked up to the father of the 3-year-old, who had picked up the boy at that point and put out his arm to keep the cyclist at a distance. They say the cyclist hit the father across his face, knocking his head into the boy’s head, who started crying.
“His son is now terrified and shaken up. He’s just seen his father assaulted by this random person who he’s never met before, and he doesn’t know why it’s happening,” the friend from Detroit said.
After that moment, the friend started recording video on his phone, he says, hoping to deter the cyclist from doing anything else.
“When I was taking the video, I was a little bit scared as if maybe he would turn on me and do something,” the friend explained. “I thought if he saw that I was recording, he would realize I don’t want to be on video doing anything that would get me in trouble, like hopefully he would just walk away.”
The video does show the man walking away after an exchange of words, which includes him saying “Why don’t you put him on a leash, like a dog?” referring to the 3-year-old boy.
The boy’s father shared the video online in a now-deleted post. A TikTok Influencer shared the post with his millions of followers. It has since gone viral, amassing millions of views in the first two days.
The attention overwhelmed the family involved, which is one reason the father of the boy says he took down all of his social media pages. The TikTok influencer didn’t ask permission to share the video.
One reason the father shared the video was to get help identifying the cyclist, but police have since tracked the man down. Wyoming Police said the investigation is still open, so they can’t share any details about the case, but it will be up to the prosecutor to decide on charges.
As for the friend who took the video, he said, “Let’s just be decent to one another and just have common courtesy and understand it’s not always easy to keep your kids exactly where you want them. There is nothing against anybody cycling; the trail is for everybody.”
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