Police Officer Stops to Play Catch With Boy Playing Alone
It's usually trouble that gets police dashboard cameras rolling. They look in on an often depressing landscape of busts, brawls and tempers blown.
But a dash cam video surfaced Saturday from Rosenberg, Texas, that shows a different picture. Sgt. Ariel Soltura was doing a routine traffic stop with his dashboard camera rolling, as is customary. All of a sudden, he saw a group of kids playing football, with one kid not part of the group. So Soltura stopped his car.
In the video, it's looks almost ominous when the car stops right where a child is standing. What's going to happen next? A confrontation? Was the kid in trouble? He runs in and out of frame continuoually until it shows that someone had tossed him a football.
A few seconds later, the police officer enters the frame and reveals that he's the one who threw the ball.
"I got out, and I think the universal sign that everybody knows for throw me the football, I held my hands up in a triangle form," Soltura said.
"I wasn't expecting that," 10-year-old Jermaine Ford said. "I thought I was in trouble and did something wrong."
"Something snapped in his head where he's like, 'Hey this guy is here to play football with me,'" Soltura said.
When the police department posted the video online, it drew a million hits within hours. People were drawn to the connection between a cop and a kid who never even knew each other's names.
They met again today for another catch.
"Everyone that sees it has probably at one time thought that they were that kid," Soltura said.
What does young Jermaine want to be when he grows up? An NFL player, or a cop? While they share a love of football, they don't agree on which team is the best. Soltura supports the Broncos in the upcoming Super Bowl, while Jermaine is rooting for the Seahawks.
They'll stick to playing catch for now.
ABC News' Brinda Adhikari contributed to this report.