John Jefferson
Gabrielle Buckley (left) in a Gwinnett County Jail mug shot, (right) a Gwinnett County police officer speaks with the child (bodycam video obtained by Law&Crime Network).
A Georgia husband and wife out driving on July 2 said they were stunned to see a 3-year-old running in the street by himself and in danger of being hit by a car after 10 p.m., so they stopped, rescued the boy, took him to a nearby gas station, and called 911. Now the child’s mother is accused of a crime for the way she allegedly tried to teach her son a “lesson.”
The Gwinnett County Police Department has alleged that Gabrielle Josephine Buckley, a 28-year-old from Decatur, recklessly left her son by himself at DeShong Park in Stone Mountain as a disciplinary tactic for being “unruly all day” and then did not call police to report her son missing for more than a half hour.
According to the police report obtained by Law&Crime, the defendant “advised that her son […] was missing since they could not find him,” but documents say that was because Michelle and Will Mosley had already rescued the 3-year-old.
Local ABC affiliate WSB-TV interviewed the shocked husband and wife, and they said they saw the boy running in the street near the park and brought him to safety, fearing he would have been hit otherwise.
“I stopped in the middle of the road, turned on flashers and said, ‘Michelle, that’s a baby,”” Will Mosley said in an on-camera interview, calling the whole situation “cruel.”
Michelle and Will Mosley speak with WSB-TV about the incident (WSB-TV/screengrab)
The police report said Buckley “advised that her son has been unruly all day due to being disruptive, trying to fight her, and spitting on her so she came to the park to teach him a lesson to give him a form of discipline,” a strategy that allegedly involved abandoning him at a picnic table and driving in her boyfriend’s car to “the other end of the park to scare her son.”
“Buckley advised that it was less than one minute when they returned to the area her son was left and he was gone so [she and her boyfriend] began to look for him but could not locate him during this time,” the police report continued. “It was about a 38 minute time lapse from the time her child was found by the witnesses and when Ms. Buckley contacted police to report her son missing[.]”
Buckley’s boyfriend, identified as Lawrence Dozier-Joubert, was also accused of reckless conduct and placed in handcuffs, but authorities said a combination of factors led him to be let go in the short term and to face an active warrant instead.
“Two other officers on scene had to leave since they were going to assist other officers on a high priority call (robbery/police pursuit), so the decision was made to un-arrest Mr. Dozier-Joubert so he could take possession of the vehicle, dog, and child,” documents said. “Ms. Buckley agreed to let Mr. Dozier-Joubert take custody of her child so he could take her child to her brother[.]”
Cops said that after Dozier-Joubert was out of handcuffs and informed of a warrant-to-be, he agreed to turn himself in later on.
According to Dozier-Joubert’s alleged version of events, he and his girlfriend left the 3-year-old at the park in the dark as a “lesson.”
“Mr. Dozier-Joubert advised that he and Ms. Buckley left her son by himself at the picnic table while it was dark with no lights and pretended to leave the park so he could learn his lesson that if he acted bad then he was going to be left at the park,” police said.
Bodycam footage released by police showed the 3-year-old in the back seat of the Mosleys’ car after the couple brought the boy to a gas station.
“He was running that way in the dark, I almost hit him. No adults around. So I stopped in the middle of the road. He said ‘Can I get in the car? Can I get in the car?’ I said ‘Yeah, get in the car, get in the car,’” Will Mosley said in the footage. “And we came up here and we called 911.”
Will Mosley tells police what he saw. (bodycam footage obtained by Law&Crime Network)
A responding officer said, “Good job.”
“I didn’t know where to take him, I didn’t know where he ran off from,” Mosley added.
That’s when the officer on scene started talking with the boy and asked him if he knows where he lives.
A Gwinnett County Police Department officer asks 3-year-old boy if he knows where he lives (bodycam footage obtained by Law&Crime Network)
“The child did mention getting upset when his mother damaged his toys and stated that he was scared being in the streets by himself,” according to the police report. “The child could not tell me where he lived[.]”
Gwinnett County court records reviewed by Law&Crime show that Buckley was issued a $2,500 bond in a misdemeanor reckless conduct case for allegedly endangering the “bodily safety of another person by consciously disregarding a substantial and unjustifiable risk that his or her act or omission will cause harm or endanger the safety of the other person and the disregard constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care which a reasonable person would exercise in the situation[.]”
Buckley has since been released.
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