A Marietta family believes a man seen walking on their property late at night sprayed poison on their child’s slide.
Jeff Petka told Cobb County police the man was caught on surveillance video about 4:30 a.m. Thursday outside the family’s Timberline Road home.
The slide belonging to the Petkas’ 2-year-old is the focus of the trespasser’s attention, the father told Channel 2 Action News.
The man reaches into his pocket and leaves something on the slide in the video.
“He can get sick and you'd have no idea that he’s been poisoned or something," Petka said.
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The Petkas said the man’s shoes left enough of the chemical substance to kill the grass where he walked.
An officer wrote that the man in the video appeared to carry “Roundup” or another toxin.
“The subject sprayed the liquid on the toy and, at one point, accidentally sprayed some of the substance beyond the toy,” the officer wrote in the report. “He then walked to the area of the grass where he had sprayed, inadvertently contaminating his shoes. He walked away, creating the footprints of dead grass.”
Kathleen Petka told the news station she never thought twice about leaving the slide and other toys in the yard overnight, but she won’t be doing that again.
Her neighbors have also been motivated to take security steps after the incident and actually install surveillance cameras they had purchased but never put up, Kathleen Petka told Channel 2.
The family turned the video over to Cobb police and are hopeful the man is arrested.
“Luckily we caught it in time,” Jeff Petka said. “I just want to stop whoever did this and make sure it doesn't happen to anybody else."
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