Abby the superhero
A 17-year-old white baby sitter in Washington state thought she had concocted a foolproof plan to steal from the home of the child she was watching: Have your 16-year-old boyfriend and his friend steal the merchandise, then blame it on two armed Black men.
But there was one thing the baby sitter didn’t count on: the 4-year-old girl she was watching, Abby Dean, knows the difference between Black and white.
Last week, Abby told the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office what really went down at her Ferndale home June 18.
“They told us to get out of the house ’cause they wanted to steal stuff,” Abby said to reporters.
The baby sitter told police two armed Black men had broken into the home — but the crooks were really the 16-year-old boyfriend and another male suspect.
“That was really her being bad. She’s not a good baby sitter,” Abby said. “The bad guys stole my kitty bank. They stole my iPod. They also stole my Xbox and my Wii.”
When the 17-year-old told investigators one of the suspects looked like the neighbor next door, police went next door, handcuffed Cody Oaks and questioned him for several hours.
But Abby had some more information for the authorities.
“It wasn’t the right skin color,” Abby told them.
She told investigators the suspects had white skin, not Black.
Soon after that gem of information from Abby, the baby sitter’s story fell to pieces and she confessed, according to reports.
“Literally in 30 seconds, she changed everything that had been going on for five, six hours,” Jennifer Dean, Abby’s mom, told reporters.
As for the neighbor, he said he hopes that the baby sitter and her accomplice learn a lesson from all of this.
“It’s kinda sad ’cause I don’t think she realizes the dangerous position she put me in,” Oaks said.
Abby said the stolen items were returned “because of me being the superhero.”
The baby sitter and her accomplices were arrested and could face robbery, burglary and perjury charges.
