Photo: DriveBC

A Kelowna woman was horrified after witnessing a man repeatedly strike a small child on the street Friday night.

Melissa was smoking on her balcony on Houghton Road near Ben Lee Park at 11:30 p.m. when she saw a man walking with a child down the road.

The child appeared to be about seven-years-old and Melissa assumed the man was his father.

“The dad was about 20 feet ahead of the little boy pushing a stroller, and he was telling the kid to hurry up and the kid was whining and saying it’s cold and rainy,” Melissa said. “The dad turned around and sprinted at him and threw him to the ground and kneeled on him and just started beating on him.

“He was putting his whole body into it, it was brutal.”

Melissa said she was initially in shock and couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She began yelling at the man, telling him she was calling the police.

She said after about 10 seconds the man got off the child and walked away quickly.

“The kid was laying there crying so I ran inside to grab my phone and called the cops and the kid got up,” she said. “He was yelling at the guy, ‘Dad please don’t leave me here, I’m scared,’ and he’s crying.”

Melissa ran down to the street, but the child was gone when she got there.

Cpl. Hees, with the Kelowna RCMP, said police responded to the incident but the child and the man were gone by the time they got there.

“Our patrols were unable to locate anyone,” Hees said. “We just weren’t able to find anybody, we did patrols around the area.”

Hees said they have no leads in the case.

“Our only witness saw them from a distance away so they were able to give descriptions but they weren’t detailed enough to identify anybody,” Hees said.