MANATEE COUNTY- A simple act of kindness landed a teen on Manatee County’s Sheriffs Office’s Facebook page, for all the wrong reasons.
“I was just in shock,” said Anis John.
Anis John says he was just being a good neighbor, returning a package mistakenly delivered to his home, but the home owner and deputies mistook his good deed for bad behavior.
“I don’t want to be seen as that type of person. I don’t want people to look at me and think that of me, you know? I kind of want to be the opposite, have them think I’m a good kid,” said John.
Manatee County Sheriff’s Office posted this picture saying “This man attempted a broad daylight residential burglary today within the Lexington subdivision.”
John says this was all a big understanding, even posting a video on Snapchat of him returning the package.
You know, just a useless video turned out to be a good idea,” said John.
The next day, Manatee County Sheriff’s Office removed the post, replacing it with a correction saying “Subsequent investigation has revealed that no crime took place. Conversely, this was actually an act of kindness.” But John’s aunt Lindsey Rousan is concerned by how quickly the original post spread.
“This went all the way to our family and his former teachers in Guam and down in Micronesia like down in the islands, even before he even knew about it,” said Rousan.
Despite the correction, she wonders how this mistake could affect his future.
“In the back of your mind there’s always that little fear that there’s somebody is going to recognize him from the original post and
think you know that he is a threat, you know instead of seeing him for who he really is,” said Rousan.
Although it ended up backfiring, John says he knows he did the right thing.
“This is not going to change me in any way and I just have to keep doing the right thing,” said John.
John hopes this correction will spread just as much as the original post did.
