It’s every person’s worst nightmare: You’re driving along when all of a sudden a siren and red and blue lights appear behind you.
When this happened to LaVonte Dell in Westland, Michigan, he thought the worst.
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The 28-year-old dad told ABC News that his “heart dropped to his stomach” and he knew he would get a ticket for his tinted windows. However, what happened instead would restore his faith in humanity.
The officer had pulled him over for his tinted windows, but upon noticing Dell’s three-year-old daughter not being in a car seat, he asked Dell to step out of the car so he could speak with him.
“I was just so scared thinking this couldn’t be good,” Dell said.
The officer, Joshua Scaglione, told ABC, “I asked him, ‘Why is she in there without a car seat?’ That’s not safe.”
Dell explained his situation to Scaglione and said that he just couldn’t afford a car seat right now.
Scaglione then knew what he had to do.
He didn’t give Dell a ticket and instead asked Dell to follow him to a Wal-Mart. Scaglione explained that he’d be more than happy to buy a car seat for him.
“He purchased one for me, and it was pink, which is my daughter’s favorite color,” Dell told ABC. “It has butterflies and she loves it.”
Dell was so moved by Scaglione’s generosity, he wrote a viral Facebook post trying to figure out who the cop was since he didn’t catch his name.
“If you would have seen us in Wal-Mart, you would have thought we were best friends,” Dell wrote in the post. Dell also wrote to “never judge a book by its cover” because there are still “some good guys left.”
“You know, a ticket doesn’t help all the time,” Officer Scaglione said. “I figured it’d be better to help him out and just raise more awareness about car safety rather than give him a ticket that would dig him deeper in a hole and make things worse for him.”
Ain’t that the truth.
You can watch the full interview with ABC below.
