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PALM BEACH POST ORANGE COUNTY, FLORIDA The man accused of taking a little boy from an Altamonte Springs hospital told Eyewitness News he did nothing wrong and was doing the boy's mother a favor. "Oh, she knew where I was. Brittany gave me the keys to her van," 31-year-old Vincent Marchese told WFTV reporter Kathi Belich during a jailhouse interview Wednesday. Marchese says his only crime was running from police. The career criminal says he panicked when police started following him Monday night. He ended up crashing into a police car and then hiding in the bushes until a police dog found him and bit him. Marchese said he told 3-year-old Alex Higg's mother, 22-year-old Brittany Higgs, that he and the boy were leaving from Florida Hospital Altamonte and going to a nearby park, because Alex was running all over the place. "In my heart, I wasn't doing anything wrong, so there was no reason to call," he said. While Brittany told Eyewitness News during an interview Tuesday that Marchese isn't her boyfriend, he had a different take on things during WFTV's interview with him Wednesday, although he stopped short of saying he was her boyfriend. "Brittany and I had plans. She's a married woman. That put a little damper on things," he said. Marchese said they've known each other for eight years. "Initially, it wasn't me wanting the relationship. It was her," he said. "We were gonna try to more or less be together." Marchese said he bought Alex a V-8, took him to the park to run off all his energy, then went back to his apartment and napped, killing what he expected to be hours that Alex's mother Brittany would be at the hospital. "She knew everything that was happening with me and Alex. I never took that child without her consent," he said. "Why did you run from police?" Kathi Belich asked. "I was scared," he said. "No license, suspended license ... I just didn't feel like going back to jail, basically." Marchese had just been picked up for driving with a suspended license days before. Investigators say, Monday night, he t-boned a Seminole County patrol car with Alex's mother's car and Alex inside, but he blames officers for that crash. "At no time did I ever ram that vehicle into a patrol car. That police car hit that van every single time," he said. Altamonte Springs police have also heard his story and now say they don't believe Marchese broke any laws the whole time he was gone with Alex, no kidnapping charge, not even a charge for interfering with custodial relationship. What got him into trouble were all the things he did once he met up with police. "It was definitely a poor choice, but, like I said, I didn't crash into any police car. The police crashed into me," he said. The only thing Altamonte Springs police charged Marchese with had nothing to do with the hours he was with Alex after they left the hospital. They charged him with child neglect for leaving Alex in the car when he ran from police.
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