The Kansas mom of a 9-week-old baby girl is warning other parents about a woman she met in an area Target store who attempted to abduct her daughter.
ABC 13 says that Rachel Youngs says she was grocery shopping in Target on Friday morning when she was approached by a woman with a dog in the baby goods section of the store. The woman gushed about how cute the baby was and asked to hold her. Youngs said yes, and immediately felt uncomfortable.
“I made a comment on how cute her dog was, and she went around to the front of my cart and made a comment about how cute my baby is. She made a comment saying, ‘yeah, I’ll trade you my dog for your baby,’ and I thought she was just joking.”
Youngs says that the woman started to walk away with her baby, and then when she started following, the woman gave the child back.
Fox 5 Atlanta says that Youngs is urging other parents to be vigilant, even in very public retail settings, that it’s better to be perceived as rude or overprotective than to let your baby or child out of your control.
SMDH. https://t.co/yAiJaUFRFT
— Michael L Hicks (@wyzeone57) November 4, 2018
Youngs said that she wished she had listened to the voice in her head and not handed the baby to the woman who immediately started acting strangely.
“She says, ‘Just so you know, I was arrested for attempted kidnapping.’ That’s when I was like, okay you know what, there’s something wrong. All of a sudden, she starts walking off with my daughter. I yelled at her, I said, ‘I need my baby back, please. Give me my baby back.’”
Youngs called out for a Target employee to call the police. When the police arrived they said there was little that they could do because Youngs had willingly handed the baby to the stranger.
Youngs explained that the woman said she had extensive experience as a babysitter and also as a dog groomer. She took the baby out of the car seat while asking if she could hold her, and Youngs didn’t know what to say.
“As she’s holding my baby she started saying weird things. She started asking me, ‘Do you have a godmother?’ I said no, and she said, ‘I’d love to be your godmother, I’ll split everything 50/50.’ And I was like this is kind of weird, like, who says this to a random person?”
Youngs explains that a little bit of fear is a good thing when it comes to protecting your children.
“Someone could come up to you and just be as nice as possible, and I try to trust people, and so many people do, but you can’t trust anyone.”
