When Nicole Langmead’s 4-year-old daughter Kaya was brave enough to ask if she could use a public bathroom on her own, Nicole was proud. The family was enjoying a New Year’s Eve meal at a McDonald’s on Exeter High Street, Devon, and Nicole had no reason to be worried. She said yes; she would wait outside.
Describing what happened next as “every mother’s worst nightmare,” Nicole had no idea what her young daughter was in for.
Nicole was not suspicious, however. She let Kaya enter the bathroom on her own, but after a few minutes, the little girl re-emerged in floods of tears. “She said something had hurt her bum,” Nicole explained, “but it never crossed my mind it would be glue.”
In a cruel and senseless prank, the two girls who had used the bathroom ahead of Kaya had spread superglue all over the toilet seat.
Nicole, who lives in the city, shared her daughter’s shocking ordeal in greater detail. “I thought maybe the seat had moved or something,” she said, “but when we checked it over there was glue everywhere.” Nicole checked Kaya’s body to see how badly she was injured. “She was left in tears,” Nicole recalled, “and the skin was ripped off the back of her legs.”
Mercifully, McDonald’s staff took the incident very seriously, immediately filing an incident report and even giving Kaya a balloon to comfort her. They were “really good,” Nicole said.
Nobody deserved to be on the receiving end of such a cruel trick, least of all an innocent 4-year-old. But Kaya’s takeaway was a positive one. “You were really brave, weren’t you?” Nicole asked her daughter. Kaya nodded proudly.