Parents Take Down Voyeur Caught Spying On Teen Girl In Cracker Barrel Bathroom, Police Say

A father in South Carolina came to the rescue of his daughter after a convicted sex offender allegedly hid out in a Cracker Barrel bathroom and tried to spy on the teenager.

On Sept. 20, a 15-year-old girl said she was in a stall and movement by her feet caught her attention, according to Duncan Police Chief Carl Long.

When she looked down, the girl claimed, she spotted a man — identified as Douglas Lane, 53 — staring up at her from an adjacent stall. She left the bathroom, where other females had witnessed the alleged incident, and told her father what happened. He then alerted an employee about the situation.

“I’ll never forget the way they looked after,” one eyewitness recalled, Spartanburg’s WSPA-TV reported. “They were traumatized.”

Chief Long said the teenager’s father was waiting for Lane when the alleged voyeur exited the restroom.

The two got into an altercation, a witness told WSPA-TV, and Lane “came running, sprinting out the front door with a very bloody nose.”

When the alleged gawker tried to escape the Cracker Barrel parking lot, a group of parents in town for a softball tournament reportedly tackled and detained him until police arrived.

Lane, whose phone was allegedly found in the restaurant’s bathroom, has been charged with voyeurism and simple possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia.

At a Sept. 21 hearing, Lane allegedly told the court he wasn’t aware he had entered the women’s restroom until he sat down, Greenville’s WYFF reported.

A judge released Lane on a $2,000 surety bond and ordered him to be monitored with a GPS device while under home detention.

The registered sex offender’s record contains multiple voyeurism charges through the years, according to the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigations, including a 2004 conviction for secretly peeping on two girls, ages 8 and 9.