Thursday night, a man grabbed his child and stuck her in the back seat of his car to keep it from getting towed, witnesses told police.

The incident was the latest confrontation at the Jones Ferry Road complex since management began enforcing a new towing policy.

The complex won't give parking stickers for cars with body damage or whose owners can't produce registration and other paperwork. Residents say the policy discriminates against the mostly Latino residents, some of them illegal immigrants, who can't comply.

Mayor Mark Chilton said he got a call about 10 p.m. Thursday from an Abbey Court resident. He and Alderwoman Jacquie Gist arrived to find about 100 people and at least two Carrboro Police Department cars.

In an e-mail message to town officials Friday morning, Chilton said residents told him the tow truck driver had tried to remove a vehicle with a child in the back seat.

By the time Chilton got there, the mayor said, the driver was unhooking the car, "but only after demanding (and receiving) a $100 cash payment from the owner of the car."

In an interview Friday, Brad Chandler of Chandler's Towing said that's not what happened.

The driver had already hooked the white Nissan Sentra to his truck when the owner ran out of an apartment carrying a child in a car seat, Chandler said.

The man, who had been visiting someone at the complex, opened the driver's door and snapped the child in to the back seat, he said.

"We didn't hook to a vehicle that had a child in it," Chandler said. "The people were outside screaming, 'Put the kid in the car, put the kid in the car.' "

Two other witnesses told police the same thing.

Chandler said the tow truck driver requested payment because the car was violating the complex's vehicle policy. He said the driver followed the same procedure he would have followed with anyone whose vehicle was already hooked to the truck.

"When we come out we have to receive payment," Chandler said. "We can't work for free."

Management says the new policy, which also bans commercial vehicles, was designed to reduce crowding in its parking lots. The complex is near a bus stop and has been used as an unofficial park-and-ride lot, management says.

Chandler said his company had towed 19 vehicles since July 17.

Bart White, an attorney for Tar Heel Companies of North Carolina, which runs the complex, has said the parking lot is private property and the policy does not discriminate.

Efforts to reach White on Friday afternoon were unsuccessful.

The Orange County Office of Human Rights and Relations is investigating the situation, its director said last week.