Man tracks down teen who mugged his young nephew and offers him chance to turn his life around

A charity worker won the hearts of people online for the compassion and empathy he showed toward a teenager who mugged his young nephew at knifepoint. Winston Davis—a heating engineer from Watford, England—went viral on social media earlier this month after he shared a TikTok video of how he confronted the young mugger. According to Watford Observer, the alleged altercation took place in London Colney in July this year. Although Davis eventually managed to track down the 16-year-old who mugged his 12-year-old nephew by "putting the pieces together," he decided to show kindness to the young man instead of bringing him to the law.

"He agreed to come back to give us the bag," Davis said, reports LADbible. "The fact that he came back to give us the bag, I was like wow. Yeah, you've done something really bad to the family I love, but the fact that you brought it back says a lot about you." He explained that he recognized there was "something in [the teenager] that wants to go on and do good" and that this was what motivated him to show him kindness instead of punishing him. "Although what he did was completely wrong, he said he was broke and needed the money... he's 16 years old, been in and out of detention centers, lives in a supported living place and has no qualifications... despite this he wants to work in computer engineering... this kid doesn’t need punishment, he needs help," Davis wrote captioning the video of his interaction with the teen on Instagram.

In the video, which has been viewed more than 75,400 times on Instagram and more than 919,900 times on TikTok, Davis is heard telling the young man: "The fact that you brought the bag back, that says a lot about you. You could have easily turned your phone off, you could have easily allowed it and bury your head in the sand. In life sometimes we do things that we regret and then we want to try make something change after that and what you're doing, bringing this back, is a big moment."

Explaining what drove him to track the teen down, Davis told reporters: "You can't go around mugging 12-year-olds, you can't go mugging anyone let alone a defenseless child. So I went to the place where it happened and started to look and see where there was CCTV. I followed the route where the lady chased the boys." However, when he eventually tracked him down, Davis said he realized he had found a “frightened boy" and used their meeting as an opportunity to figure out why he did it. "That's when he told me he's been in and out of detention centers and had no education and has literally been living in supported living," he shared. "I said to him look, I'll help you if you return the bag. We made the agreement that he would go get the bag and come back the next - and fair play to him that's exactly what he did."