Stepfather sentenced after secret note from waitress saves boy from child abuse

A man who was found to be abusing his stepson will spend the rest of his life in prison, after a waitress in a restaurant slipped the 11-year-old boy a note asking if he needed help.

Timothy Lee Wilson, a 36-year-old man from Orlando, Florida, has been handed four life sentences by a judge in Orlando, having been found guilty of false imprisonment, aggravated child abuse including with a weapon and child neglect in June, The Mirror reports.

Wilson’s actions were discovered after he visited a restaurant with his stepson, wherein a waitress, Flaviane Carvalho, noticed that the man had ordered food for himself, but nothing for his stepson, who was also “covered in scratches”, per The Mirror.

Ms Carvalho then held up a note out of Wilson’s line of sight for the boy to see. It read “Do you need help?”

When the boy nodded, she reportedly wrote “Ok” and phoned the police.

“I’m super concerned and I don’t know what to do, can you give me some advice?” Carvalho told a dispatcher, per local news source WFLA.

She later said of the incident:

“I could see he had a big scratch between his eyebrows. Couple of minutes later, I saw a bruise on the side of his eye. So I felt there was something really wrong.

“I was used like a tool from God to help him. We need to pay attention for the ones that are in need, and step forward to do something to change the situation.”

A news release written by the State Attorney’s Office for Orange and Osceola Counties stated, “(The child) had been tortured, maliciously punished, and deprived of food and water for days at a time.

“A search warrant revealed that the victim was kept in a separate hotel room used for storage, away from Mr Wilson, the victim’s mother, and the younger sibling.”