A man has been arrested after shocking video showed him strangling a 10-year-old boy at a Sunny Isles Beach park, police said.
Robert Sandy Marcu, 60, was arrested Monday on charges of battery by strangulation and aggravated child abuse, an arrest report said.
The alleged incident happened at Gwen Margolis Park after some sort of altercation between two boys.
According to the report, the victim's father said his son was playing with water guns at the park with another child when the other child's father, Marcu, grabbed his son by the neck "impeding his breathing and restricting his air way and shaking him around while still gripping his neck."
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Video released by police showed a man, who police said was Marcu, holding the boy by his neck and violently shaking him.
"Well there were two kids basically playing, like children do, at one of our parks, and at some point they became involved in some type of altercation, child’s play between each other, nothing violent to our knowledge, at that time one of the parents of one of the children decided to intervene and take matters into his own hands," Sunny Isles Beach Police Sgt. Melissa Porro said. "He went ahead and approached the other child and proceeded to choke this child and violently choke him, causing this child to be extremely fearful and crying and very upset."
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Police said the boy had red marks on his neck and scratches from the encounter. Marcu was later taken into custody.
"As officers went ahead and took him into custody he basically spontaneously told the officers, 'yeah, I know what I did, I needed to teach him a lesson,'" Porro said. "You can see from this video that you have a fully grown, tall, large man against this young, helpless child, so yes, absolutely, this child could’ve been seriously injured."
Marcu was booked into jail. Attorney information wasn't available.
Police aren't sure if the families know each other, but the boys go to the same school.
Porro said it's never ok for an adult to grab a child like that, especially if it's not their child, and said the proper thing to do would be to take the issue up with the parents in a non-violent way, or even call the parents and let them mediate the situation.
