Man Leaves 6-Year-Old Asleep Outside Target at 1 AM to Hold Spot for Pokémon Cards

The Pillow Was a Nice Touch

According to NBC News, officers responded around 2:30 a.m. to the Target in Charleston's West Ashley neighborhood after a report of an unattended child. They found the girl alone. Police identified her father as John-Michael Dooley, 35, of Johns Island.

Witnesses told police that Dooley handed his daughter a pillow and blanket before leaving her asleep in line sometime after 1 a.m. Let that sink in for a second. He didn't forget her. He didn't lose track of her in the chaos. He made her comfortable, which means he planned this.

In his defense, the pillow was a thoughtful gesture. A man who builds his child a little nest on the Target sidewalk is a man who has thought about her comfort for at least four or five seconds.

Customers Did the Parenting

About an hour went by with no sign of Dooley. That's when concerned customers, the other people standing in the middle of the night waiting for Pokémon cards, called police. Think about that. The adults in this story who stepped up were the strangers in line.

Numerous customers had gathered outside the store overnight in anticipation of the release, per the Charleston Police Department's news release. So this child was not hidden in some dark corner. She was in a crowd, asleep on a sidewalk, in the middle of the night, and the crowd is who noticed something was wrong. The one person who should have been there was home.

Somewhere in Charleston tonight there is a group of Pokémon enthusiasts who performed a better welfare check than the child's own father.

He Went Home, Police Say

When Dooley came back to the store, witnesses identified him and he was arrested. Police said he admitted he had gone home and left his daughter unattended so he could keep his place in line.

Read that sentence again. The line was the point. He left a six-year-old on a sidewalk so a line would not move without him in it. The line, one assumes, was holding up fine. A line does not require the physical presence of the person it is saving a spot for, as anyone who has ever put a jacket on a chair knows. He could have put a jacket on the sidewalk. He put a child there instead.

The release does not say whether he intended to buy the cards for himself or for his daughter. That detail matters less than you'd think. Neither answer improves the situation.

What Was Actually on Sale

The product in question is the latest expansion for the Pokémon Trading Card Game, called "Mega Evolution, Delta Reign," which went on sale Friday. Packs start at around $5. The franchise is decades old, began as a Japanese children's video game, and centers on collecting, training and battling fictional creatures.

Five dollars. That's the entry price. A pack of cards that costs less than a sandwich is the thing a grown man decided was worth leaving a first-grader alone on a public sidewalk at 1 a.m. We don't know how many packs he was after, and it's possible he wanted a lot of them. It still isn't a number that makes this make sense.

The Girl Is Fine, Which Is Luck

The child was unharmed and placed in emergency protective custody with the South Carolina Department of Social Services. Dooley was charged with unlawful conduct toward a child and is being held at the Al Cannon Detention Center. He could not immediately be reached for comment.

Unharmed is the good news, and it is the only good news. She was fine because strangers in a Target line cared more than the adult who brought her there. Nothing about the plan produced that outcome. A six-year-old asleep alone on a sidewalk overnight is safe only if nothing happens, and the plan had no answer for anything happening.