Published: August 18, 2008 08:12 pm            

Florida man arrested following tip from waitress

Karen Griggs said she knew there was something not right about the older man and two young girls who came into the restaurant where she works as a waitress around 9 Saturday night.

Lloyd Luis Burrlin Sherwood, 66, of Williston, Fla., was traveling from Florida to Michigan to go camping with the girls, ages 4 and 6, when he stopped at the Waffle House off Connector 3, said Lt. Nancy Chadwick with the Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office. After Griggs called 911 about her suspicions, the children were questioned by detectives and Sherwood was arrested on a charge of aggravated child molestation.

Griggs said she became suspicious when the man took one of the girls into the restroom and stayed for 15 minutes.

“He came out and they ordered food,” Griggs said. “Five minutes later, he went back to the restroom with the smallest.”

The girls were wearing miniskirts and lip gloss and told Griggs they were going camping, she said. But when she went outside and looked at the car Sherwood was driving, she didn’t see any camping equipment.

“He is a friend of the girls’ family and he had them with the consent of the parents,” Chadwick said.

The children are now in the custody of the Department of Family and Children Services. Sherwood remained in the Whitfield County Jail Monday evening on a $25,000 bond.

Chadwick said the employee did the right thing in contacting 911.

“No one knows where they would have went or how it would have ended,” she said.

        

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