A north mother has spoken of how her 12-year-old daughter was snatched in a dark alleyway by the same man convicted of taking an autistic boy from Inverness train station last week.
The girl, who can not be identified for legal reasons, was walking to a city chip shop in March last year when Dawid Grzybek, 32, ran towards her and seized her face and then her wrist – forcing her to use a martial arts move to escape.
Nearly a year on from the incident, the girl’s mother is still driving her daughter to and from school because she is too scared to walk by herself.
Last night the mother said: “It’s soul-destroying to know he has done this to another child.
“I don’t think he should be out on the streets, whether that means custodial or psychiatric treatment. He has proven he will do this again and again. I am not qualified to speak about the way he is but there is definitely something wrong with someone who thinks it’s okay trying to take children.”
The mother said her daughter, who was 12 at the time, was walking along Morvich Way shortly before 7pm when Grzybek grabbed her face with both hands.
She said her daughter shouted at him to “get off” and tried to run, but he grabbed her tightly by the arm, leaving a hand print and bruising the next day.
The mother described how her daughter then used a martial arts maneouvre to release his grip – but he chased her for about 500 metres. The girl then ran home after he stopped pursuing her.
The mother said her daughter was “absolutely terrified” when she burst through the door of the house, adding: “She could not really breathe very well. She had been running and said, ‘this man grabbed me and I ran and now I need to check if my friends are okay.’ She was more worried about her friends than herself.”
The mother said her daughter gave police a description of the man and what he was wearing, adding that officers had used CCTV images from the chip shop to help track him down.
She said police officers were “exceptional” in how well they handled the incident with her daughter.
Grzybek was found guilty after trial on September 25 last year of behaving in a threatening and abusive manner likely to cause fear or alarm by running towards the girl, seizing her face and her wrist and pursuing her.
Shortly before this, he stared at another 12-year-old girl and blocked her path and, as she attempted to leave, grabbed her and kicked a lamppost.
On October 26, Grzybek was sentenced with a community payback order of 200 hours unpaid work with a supervision requirement of two years.
But the 32-year-old appeared back in the dock last Tuesday. He admitted behaving in a disorderly manner by picking up a 10-year-old autistic boy at Inverness train station and walking off with him, placing his mother and the boy in a state of fear or alarm.
Fiscal depute Ross Carvel told the court the boy’s mother had momentarily taken her eyes off him to glance at a magazine as she sat in the waiting room, watching her son through the glass partition.
But when she looked up he had gone, and she then saw her son in Grzybek’s arms before he put him down near the lost property area.
He told officers he was drunk, getting divorced from his wife and that he had a seven-year-old child, and said ‘I suppose I thought the child was mine. I didn’t injure him.’
Grzybek is due to be sentenced on March 20 following the completion of a background and psychiatric report.