Cobb County prosecutors on Wednesday agreed to drop criminal charges against a Walmart shopper accused of trying to snatch a 2-year-old boy from his mother inside the busy store.
Mahendra Patel, a 57-year-old real estate investor and father of two, spent more than six weeks behind bars after his controversial March 22 arrest.
The Cobb County District Attorney’s Office quickly indicted the Kennesaw man on three charges stemming from his encounter with the fellow customer who accused him of trying to rip her son from her arms.
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
But video footage from the heavily surveilled Acworth store raised eyebrows as it appeared to contradict claims made by both the woman and local police.
On Wednesday, Deputy Chief ADA Lauren McAuley said Patel had met with his accuser and that her office had agreed to dismiss all of the charges.
Patel, who smiled in the courthouse alongside his wife and daughters, said he was grateful to finally put this behind him.
“I’m just relieved,” he said after his charges were dropped. “I’m going to enjoy my freedom.”
Patel said he had a tough time during the six-plus weeks he spent in jail, dropping more than 17 pounds behind bars. His arrest made international news in April, especially after the release of the store’s surveillance footage, which he said helped “change the narrative.”
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
“I cannot thank everybody enough,” he told reporters. “We had so much support.”
Patel’s attorney, Ashleigh Merchant, maintained from the beginning that he was simply trying to help the young mother, who was riding through the grocery store on a motorized scooter with her two children in tow.
She said her client was there buying Tylenol for his 86-year-old mother when he encountered Caroline Miller, who was “joyriding” through the store with her kids on her lap.
Patel, who Merchant described as “friendly with everybody,” approached the family and asked where the medication was, she said. She said he reached out to catch the boy because he was concerned he might fall off the scooter.
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
Miller told authorities Patel tried to grab her son, saying the two engaged in a “tug-of-war” over her 2-year-old. She first reported the incident to Walmart employees, who urged her to contact police if she believed a crime had been committed, according to court filings.
At a bond hearing in May, Merchant told the judge an employee who had been just steps away from the interaction told her he never felt the need to intervene.
“The video couldn’t be clearer,” she said, playing the surveillance footage in court. “Mr. Patel did not try to kidnap this child.”
Video showed Patel casually walking around the Walmart and even chatting with employees before leaving with the pain reliever he bought using his debit card. He also encountered Miller a second time on his way to the register and appeared to show her the bottle of Tylenol he had found.
In May, Judge Gregory Poole granted Patel a $10,000 bond over the objections of the prosecution, which had sought to keep him in jail until trial.
“This mother was with her two kids, minding her own business, and this man, Mr. Patel, made the decision to grab a 2-year-old child from her lap,” Chief Assistant DA Jesse Evans said at the hearing.
Evans previously served as the chief of the Acworth Police Department, the agency that responded to the Walmart and brought the charges against Patel. Both the police department and Cobb DA Sonya Allen have been criticized over their handling of the case.
Neither Evans nor Allen was present for Wednesday’s proceeding.
Several defense attorneys and former prosecutors told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution they couldn’t see where a crime had been committed. They also criticized the DA’s office for indicting the case before Patel could appear before a judge for a probable cause hearing, saying that’s why he spent so long behind bars.
“They should drop the charges,” former DeKalb County DA J. Tom Morgan said Tuesday. “There was not even probable cause for an arrest, much less an indictment.”
Morgan showed the surveillance footage to his criminal law students months ago, telling them their job was to “find the crime.” He blasted the DA’s office for arguing against bond three months ago, only to turn around and agree to drop the charges.
“He was in jail for 45 days before he was able to get a bond hearing, and now they’re dismissing the charges,” Morgan said. “To me, that’s an abuse of the criminal justice system.”
Acworth police watched the footage at the scene, and officers spoke with the mother at the store and later at her home before swearing out warrants for Patel’s arrest, records show.
A spokesperson for the police department said Wednesday that the evidence was presented to a judge, who determined there was enough probable cause for an arrest. Once Patel was indicted by a grand jury, the local police department said the case was out of their hands.
Sgt. Eric Mistretta acknowledged the backlash from the community over the arrest but said that was largely because of the edited surveillance footage put out by Patel’s defense team.
Merchant said if police and prosecutors had looked at the case more critically, it wouldn’t have dragged on for so long.
“I knew when I met Mick that he didn’t do it,” she said. “If they’d investigated and known what a good person he is, then they would have known this was a misunderstanding.”
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