Here’s a “good news” story we found at OregonLive.com:
Fourteen-year-old Nichelle McKinney couldn’t believe her eyes.
She and a friend had just stepped into the darkened Avalon Theatre in Southeast Portland on Feb. 14 when she saw a man in the back row touching a 6-year-old girl who was on his lap.
“I thought I was imagining things,” said McKinney. “That’s why I sat so close to him.”
McKinney and her friend, Shai’Onna Jackson-Justice, 14, took a seat in the row in front of the man, and McKinney kept turning back to see what was happening — even though Jackson-Justice told her to stop looking. She said it was none of their business.
But McKinney knew something was wrong. The man had the girl’s shirt pulled up and was rubbing her chest. Jackson-Justice texted her grandma. When they didn’t hear back, McKinney tapped the shoulder of a woman sitting in front of her.
Christine Bemrose and her daughter, Erin Nolan, 12, were watching “The Tale of Despereaux,” the adventures of a cartoon mouse, Feb. 14 in the Avalon Theatre when a girl behind them told her she saw a man molesting a young girl.That set into motion a call to 9-1-1, an arrest, an investigation and — this week — a 15-year prison sentence for the man, a child molester who police say could have gone undetected for years if not for McKinney’s persistence. Investigators also credit Christine Bemrose, the 34-year-old woman who happened to be sitting in front of McKinney, and Jackson-Justice for helping catch a predator.
