Mom Is Arrested For Letting 11-Year-Old Son Drive Golf Cart

Julie Mall, from Charlotte, North Carolina, was vacationing with her family on Bald Head Island when their idyllic trip quickly turned sour.

Mall told the Charlotte Observer that she allowed her 11-year-old son to drive a golf cart two blocks black to their rented cottage, with his father sitting beside him. 

They were almost back to their cottage when a police golf cart with flashing lights pulled them over, and “Immediately he started berating us,” Mall said. “He was saying ‘How old is this kid?’ ‘Are you guys drunk?’ ‘I could write you up for child abuse,’” she continued. Her son burst into tears, and Mall asked her niece to take her kids back to the cottage. 

Mall admits she was wrong and was aware that the legal age for driving a golf cart on the island is 16, but she says the officer was aggressive, and repeatedly accused her of being drunk. 

“He lunged across at me, twisting my arm behind my back. I’m hysterical. I’ve never been that scared of anything in my life,” Mall told the Charlotte Observer. 

When her husband, Scott Mall, returned from the cottage, police told him to stand back, so he took out his cell phone and video tapped the seen. “As soon as I came up there, I saw him start coming toward her. My reaction was to film it so we’d have some proof because I knew this wasn’t an up-and-up situation,” Scott says. But then, “It became a frightening situation,” he continued. “It escalated out of control.”

Mall was put in handcuffs and taken off the island on a ferry and ended up spending hours in police custody. She was charged with resisting public officer and misdemeanor child abuse. Officer James Hunter said in an arrest report that Mall was drunk and truly, but when he didn’t show up for two court dates, the case was ultimately dismissed. 

Watch this chilling video of officers arresting Mall: