Background: PortMiami in Miami, Fla. (Google Maps). Inset: Paetra Grandsberry (Miami-Dade County Corrections and Rehabilitation).
A mom who allegedly grabbed a teenager by the collar and tackled him to the ground on a cruise ship that docked in Florida is facing a child abuse charge.
Paetra Grandsberry, 38, is from Minnesota but was aboard a Carnival Cruise ship on Sunday when police said she was speaking to a security guard about a group of teenagers who allegedly attacked her two sons. According to court documents reviewed by Law&Crime, she was reporting the alleged attack when she saw "a group of kids running" and claimed that one of them hit her sons. Grandsberry then "ran away" from the security guard to chase after the group, then allegedly "jumped on top of" one of the kids and "grabbed him by his collar."
During the alleged incident, police said that Grandsberry called for her children, who were nearby, to "attack" the boy she tackled, saying, "This is one of the kids who attacked my son." Security eventually intervened, freeing the boy, who ran back to his aunt.
When Grandsberry was detained and read her Miranda rights, she told police that she soon realized that the boy she identified as the one who attacked her sons was not the right person. She claimed that she was "angry," and "in the heat of the moment," she "ran up" to the boy, "accidentally fell on top" of him, and called him "a little motherf—er."
Grandsberry told police that as soon as she realized this was a case of mistaken identity, she left the boy alone. She was arrested by deputies from the Miami-Dade County Sheriff's Office after the ship docked in Miami, Florida.
The boy told police he was not injured and did not seek medical attention following the alleged attack.
Grandsberry was charged with one count of child abuse with no great bodily harm and booked into the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, where she is being held on $2,500 bond.