No place in a launch line is worth what police say happened outside a Charleston Target this week. Collectors have camped overnight for cards all year and most of those stories end with a box in hand and a long sleep after. This one ends with an arrest and a child in protective custody and it is the clearest sign yet that launch morning pressure has pushed past anything the hobby should accept.
What police say happened in the West Ashley line
Charleston police say John-Michael Dooley, 35, of Johns Island was waiting outside the Target in the West Ashley district with his six year old daughter in the early hours of November 6, alongside a crowd of other customers who had gathered overnight for a new card release. Witnesses told officers that sometime after 1 AM he gave his daughter a pillow and a blanket and left her asleep in the line. About an hour passed without him coming back and the people waiting nearby called the police. Officers arrived at around two thirty in the morning to reports of an unattended child.
Police say Dooley came back to the store later and witnesses pointed him out to officers, who arrested him there. In his interview with detectives he admitted that he had gone home and left his daughter outside the store so he could keep his place in line and still get the chance to buy the cards. That admission sits at the center of every report of this case and none of the reports suggest he planned to buy the cards for anyone in particular.
The charge and the outcome for his daughter
Dooley was charged with unlawful conduct toward a child and booked into the Al Cannon Detention Center. His bond was set at $40,000. Reports of his first court date differ between outlets so that date is not stated here until a court record settles it. His daughter was not harmed. She was placed in emergency protective custody with the South Carolina Department of Social Services.
What the line was standing there for
The release pulling crowds that morning was the widest one of the month. The official November lineup from The Pokémon Company lists Mega Evolution Delta Reign products as available on November 6, including the Booster Display Box and the Elite Trainer Box and the Booster Bundle, and the 30th Celebration wave landed the same day with the Ultra Premium Collection and the Ditto Premium Collection and the Figure Collection. Two major waves on one morning is exactly the recipe that has filled sidewalks all year, from the queue of more than 120 people we reported outside Forbidden Planet in London in our November 7 launch queue report to the overnight lines that have become routine at big box stores in the United States.
Our take for collectors
Our take is plain. The fear of missing a release is real and every collector reading this has felt some version of it this year, and it still does not come close to explaining this choice. A booster box is a printed product that will be restocked and repriced and resold for years. A night alone outside a closed store is a risk no child chose and no card can repay. The people in that line who called the police did the hobby a service and they are the reason this story ends with a child safe instead of something worse.
There is also a retail lesson in this arrest and it connects straight to coverage on this site all month. Stores are already redesigning launch morning because overnight lines create exactly this kind of danger and disorder. Target has moved part of its Pokémon sales into a drawing system in our November 2 report on the first Target drawing and Walmart ran a one hour collectibles drawing in our November 4 Walmart drawing report. Every drawing and invite window and purchase limit that frustrates collectors exists because the alternative is a crowd competing for position in a parking lot at night.
What to watch next
Watch how Target handles its next major Pokémon morning after an arrest outside one of its stores on the biggest launch day of the season, because a move away from overnight lines toward drawings would be a direct answer to this case. Watch the Mega Greninja ex League Battle Deck on November 13 as the next dated product in the official November lineup and a smaller test of whether crowds gather the same way for a ready to play deck. And watch the court process in Charleston for the facts that reporting has not yet settled, starting with a confirmed hearing date from the court itself.