HOW could anyone steal from him?
When life steals your lemonade stand money, keep making lemonade. That’s exactly what happened on Sunday afternoon on the corner of West 70th Street and Columbus Avenue.
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According to an NYPD spokesperson, while 8-year-old entrepreneurial tycoon Julian Lin was running his lemonade stand, two young males (who appeared to be teens) waited in line and approached him, asking for lemonade. When Julian turned to give them drinks, they swiped his jar of money and blew the spot, riding their scooters south down Columbus Avenue.
Julian had a bad feeling about these guys, so he (or his mom) snapped a photo of them while they were waiting in line.
Julian’s mom tells us the jar had between $100-$150 in it. He had been selling for 4 hours at the time of the incident (about 3:20 p.m.), but thankfully, some of his customers had paid him using Venmo.
ILTUWS connected with Julian (also known as ‘Julian Business Man‘) on Monday, June 5 to chat about the incident. The following interview was conducted via text, and we were told it was Julian, so we’ll go with that.
Did the incident that took place at your lemonade stand change the way you feel about humanity?
Definitely. I feel disappointed in humanity. I didn’t realize that someone would want to rob an 8-year-old.
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How did it feel seeing the community support you after the incident took place?
When I lost all that cash, a lot of people wanted to help me recover, so they gave me extra big tips. It made me feel good that so many people wanted to help me recover from this attack. It made me feel happy, joyful and grateful.
Do you think you’ll make any changes moving forward?
Yes. I will not have my money out there for anyone to grab. I will be more alert. I will trust my instincts because I could tell that those guys were shady since one of them was wearing a ski mask. But I will keep doing what I’m doing, because I love being a businessman, and I love dogs. And 30% of all of my profits go to Best Friends Animal Sanctuary.
If you’d like to donate to Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, you can contribute to Julian’s fundraiser page here.
If anyone sees the young thieves scooting down the street or has relevant information about them, call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the CrimeStoppers website or by sending a direct message to @NYPDTips on Twitter. All calls are strictly confidential.
Bounty hunting isn’t legal.
Teachable moment, kids:
“Among the most firmly established facts about criminal offenders is that their distribution of IQ scores differs from that of the population at large. Taking the scientific literature as a whole, criminal offenders have average IQs of about 92, eight points below the mean. More serious or chronic offenders generally have lower scores than more casual offenders. The relationship of IQ to criminality is especially pronounced in the small fraction of the population, primarily young men, who constitute the chronic criminals that account for a disproportionate amount of crime.”
Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein
The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (1994)
More specifically, most crime is committed by certain young men. Of course we can’t talk about that because facing reality is unacceptable.
Can this show how low our neighborhood and city has gone downhill any more? And before anyone chimes in “the people that stole – maybe they needed money to feed themselves and buy bread and milk” – BULL. The city has a go ahead and steal and do what you want vibe now. I have faith the NYPD will find them but we all know what will happen when they do. Everyone running this city will say “you poor thing, it’s not your fault” and they’ll go home and do it again and worse tomorrow. Thank you elected officials.
Amazing that an 8 year old child is being productive and working hard, compared to the two low-life criminal teenagers.
That 8-year-old is already more of a man than those two boys will ever be.
You ought to change the channel.
Enough with calls to close Rikers.
Make it bigger. Build up.
Don’t want to go to Rikers? Don’t commit crimes.
lol no description of the suspects.
What’s the point of the distracting snark in offering this “ The following interview was conducted via text, and we were told it was Julian, so we’ll go with that”. So we’ll go with that?! editorializing beyond the scope of the story is unnecessary and dull. It undermines what this kid had to endure.
Good.
Teach that kid- and hopefully his inept and irresponsible parents- to stay off the streets.
They’re dangerous out there!.
A Xi Bot wrote this garbage,