Furious Gosport dad forces son to apologise for his 'vile mouth' after video of boy abusing Asda staff goes viral
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Sheepish Charlie Baldwin was hauled before staff at Asda in Gosport today by his dad Ben Baldwin after a video appeared yesterday showing the youngster and another boy swearing and threatening staff.
The shocking footage, which was shared over Facebook, wracked up more almost 500,000 in less than a day, and left people appalled.
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Hide AdAnd in a public post shared on Facebook site, Gosport Aware – which has since been removed – Mr Baldwin publicly chastised his boy in a display of tough love that has been praised widely on social media.
In a statement online, Mr Baldwin said: ‘For everyone who has seen a video of this boy threatening members of staff at Asda yesterday. As a dad I have never been more disgusted and mortified with my son in my life.
‘He has not been brought up to behave in this manner and I do not condone his behaviour at all.’
The apology video was seen by tens of thousands of people and shared almost 8,000 times online before it was taken down.
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Hide AdIn it, Charlie – with his hands in his pockets and speaking softly – said to a member of staff: ‘Please sir, I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I was just angry… There’s nothing else to say but “I’m sorry”.’
In the video, a visibly outraged Mr Baldwin demanded his son to apologise to ‘all the members of staff at Asda’ for ‘embarrassing people’ with his ‘vile mouth’.
He added: ‘I’m your dad and I’ve had to bring you down here because you disrespect everyone. And now you’re plastered all over Facebook. It’s disgusting, Charlie. We don’t bring you up like this, do we Charlie.’
The original video showed Charlie and another boy, who isn’t being named publicly by The News, shouting and swearing at staff, before threatening to ‘cut them’. The pair of youngsters then rode off on their bikes.
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Hide AdIt’s understood the police have since been informed about the incident although no arrests have been made.
Mr Baldwin insisted to the staff his son would ‘never come round’ to the store again and pledged to thoroughly ‘punish’ his child for his behaviour.
Many praised Mr Baldwin’s tough stance, with one person saying: ‘Well done dad. A very hard lesson learnt. Lots of respect to you.’
While another commented: ‘Hat's off bud, well done. Hopefully lesson learned. Fair play to your lad for accepting the punishment too, though. Cannot have been easy for either of you.’
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Hide AdA spokesman from Asda added: ‘Our colleagues are doing everything possible to try and support customers during this time – but we need our customers to treat each other, and our team with respect.
‘Under no circumstances do we tolerate violence towards colleagues or customers in our stores and we will work with the authorities where necessary.’