Pregnant 25-year-old Adel Charles of Croydon, England was humiliated by a traffic officer before he gave her a ticket. She had paid for an hour of parking outside a clinic for her final pre-birth check-up -- she’s due on Friday.
According to Thisiscroydontoday.co.uk, she walked out of the clinic, saw the officer standing over her car and pleaded with him not to issue her a ticket. She said “You could see me waddling over as fast as I could” and he replied:
“You should have waddled faster.”
Then, Charles says the man laughed and drove away. And she cried.
The ticket showed that her parking space expired at 11:06 am -- the warden issued her ticket at 11:10.
"It's disgusting. I understand they have a job to do and I wouldn't have argued if I was 20 minutes late, but as I understand it they are supposed to give you a five-minute discretionary period,” Charles told Croydon Today.
Her appointment had taken longer than expected because of complications with her pregnancy. She was told that her baby was “not engaging.”
"It was a huge setback and the ticket just added insult to injury," she said.
Croydon Council has responded by confirming that there will be an investigation, the newspaper reports.
Charles plans to appeal the £30 fine (about $47), but considering that only .2 percent of fines issues last year were overturned, she doesn’t think her chances are great.
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