Cheryl Jackson was eating lunch with her son, Colin, at a Ruby Tuesday restaurant after he was missing for four weeks.
“I?m sitting here at lunch with Colin right now, and he?s doing great,” said Sheriff Curtis Cochran, of the sheriff?s office in Swain County, N.C., where Colin was found Monday with his non-custodial father.
“His mother is here, too, and she?s excited to have him back in her custody.”
David Jackson, 46, of Crofton, was being held Tuesday at the county jail in Bryson City, N.C., and is expected to meet with an attorney today to discuss his rights for extradition. Jackson is expected to return to Maryland in about a week, Cochran said.
“Colin understands what happened. He?s a very intelligent 6-year-old. But I don?t know if his father has told him what he did was wrong,” Cochran said.
Anne Arundel police charged Jackson with non-custodial parental abduction and expect him to pay a $250 fine and serve less than 30 days, said Sgt. Sara Schriver, a police spokeswoman.
A parent who takes a child out of the state for more than 30 days is subject to a $500 fine and one year in prison, according to the Anne Arundel State?s Attorney?s Office.
The Jackson incident began Aug. 28.
Jackson had been renting a home in Bryson City, where he and Colin lived for just under a month, Cochran said.
“We had fliers saturated in North Carolina because of a lead we got,” Schriver said.
Jackson and Colin were spotted Monday afternoon by Jeff Belefield, a librarian at the Marianna Black Library in Bryson City, who had seen the fliers on the Internet.
Belefield notified the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and the local sheriff’s office found Jackson and Colin at a nearby grocery store, police said.
“When Colin was found, he was safe and unharmed,” Schriver said.
