A group of angry fathers took matters into their own hands when a teen girl told them a man leered at her in a Cracker Barrel restroom.
The incident happened at a Duncan, SC Cracker Barrel restaurant on Sunday morning. A group of fathers were having breakfast with their daughters – members of a softball team – when a 15-year-old girl returned from the women’s restroom and told her father a man was peeking at her from under the restroom stall.
The girl said she noticed something moving near her feet and realized it was a man’s head coming from the stall next to hers. The 15-year-old wasn’t the only girl in the restroom at the time.
“I’ll never forget the way they looked after. They were traumatized,” a witness said.
The outraged father asked a female employee to get the man out of the restroom so he could have a word with him. The employee found the man in a stall and told him to get out.
The girl’s father confronted the man – identified as Douglas Lane, 53, of Charlotte, NC, as he exited the restroom. Other fathers joined in to “talk” with Lane.
“The guy came running, sprinting out the front door with a very bloody nose,” a witness told WSPA.com.
Not done with their talk, the group of outraged dads pursued Lane into the parking lot and tackled him to the asphalt.
Lane tried to get away, but the fathers restrained him until police arrived.
Police recovered Lane’s cell phone on the floor of the women’s restroom.
Lane, a registered sex offender, was charged with voyeurism, possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia. He had been charged with peeping at least eight times prior to this incident.
Lane was released on $2,000 bond and will be monitored by GPS. The judge ordered he move to South Carolina, but he must have no contact with the victim or her family.
