A dad walking with his daughter who was publicly shamed on social media and reported to cops has spoken out to clear his name.
Joey Lennon had been out with his young girl when a picture was taken of them outside a home in the St Helens area of Merseyside.
The Facebook post with the picture warned locals to "keep their eyes peeled" for Joey as he was "looking into houses" and said the incident had been reported to the police.
Joey told the Liverpool Echo: "It was around 8pm and we were just going on a little walk and my daughter spotted an old alarm box on this house.
"It looked like [the house] had been empty for a couple of years as it was quite dilapidated.
"My daughter said 'there’s birds up there' and I was trying to see the birds nest. Walking away I thought 'there's no birds in there' and later she told me she was winding me up.
"I went to bed early because I'm a web designer and it doesn't do me any good staying up. In the morning I woke up to messages from like 50 people saying ‘have you seen this?’ I spat my coffee out.
"I was shocked. I've never done anything bad and anyone who knows me knows it’s not something I'd do."
Joey went onto Facebook himself in a bid to clear his name.
He wrote: "Just gonna put this out there. A lot of people have messaged me over this and were quite shocked someone would post this to be honest.
"I'm not a thief (neither is my little girl). You're quite safe lol.
"My little girl told me she saw a nest in an old alarm box on a house as we were walking home. I don't know why I fell for it, but I did and so I looked - you got my good side so thank you. (She got me good this time, the little wind up haha)."
He added that friends found his response funny and that he thinks people should be "vigilant" not "paranoid" when posting online.
He said: "I'm a parent at the end of the day and you don't want that type of stuff posted so I thought I'd do that.
"I could've got a lot more cross about it at that point, but I wanted to make it more of a comedy thing.
"Never in my life has anything like that happened to me before, that’s why people were messaging me. I was just walking down that road thinking there's no birds in that nest.
"A lot of people found it funny, especially when you know I'm not that type of person. They were as shocked as I was."
