She Was Grocery Shopping With Her Son. Then a Random Woman Told Her She Was Being Followed, ‘I Went Home and Cried’
Having situational awareness in a public space is important, especially for those who are in a vulnerable position. Brooklynn Gee (@brooklynngee) went grocery shopping with her son, but what was supposed to be a quick trip to the store ended with her shaking in fear.
Gee went with her son to the store later in the evening. She walked past a woman who was on the phone, who glanced back at her.
“At first, I felt weird about it, but was like, maybe she thought she knew me,” Gee stated. After all, it’s not odd for people to look twice at a stranger if they seem familiar. She shrugged the feeling of unease off and proceeded to go into a different aisle.
While she was scanning for items, she felt someone enter the aisle. Gee reached for her son, and then she heard somebody laugh. When she turned around, the same woman was standing near her son.
“I really think he’s following you”
“She wasn’t looking at anything. She wasn’t reaching for anything,” Gee noted. She alleged that the woman was just standing there, looking at her and her son. She felt alarmed by the woman’s presence, so Gee took all the items she needed and left the aisle.
But even though they were already in a different section, the woman reappeared. Then, she gave Gee an unsettling warning.
“Hey, do you know that guy over there in the hat?” The woman supposedly asked Gee. There was a man with a hat nearby, and Gee told the woman that she didn’t know him.
“Well, I really think he’s following you,” the woman warned. Gee said she thanked the woman for her concern, but the feeling of unease sat in her gut. She was still irked by the woman for some inexplicable reason.
A grocery trip that could have gone wrong
Gee said that she also started watching the man. When she finally made it to the checkout aisle. Ahead of her was the woman who had cautioned her earlier.
Again, Gee said she received the same warning from the woman about the strange man.
“I’m sorry for saying something, but when you were in the one aisle, he came in and pretended to look at something, and I don’t think he was actually looking at anything,” the woman allegedly told Gee. But Gee found the woman’s version of events strange.
Because the man wasn’t the one strangely standing in the aisle, but the woman. Gee remembered how the woman laughed near her son. She didn’t remember seeing the man in the aisle with them.
Nevertheless, the strange woman started checking out. She also noticed that the man was checking out on the opposite end of the store. Oddly enough, the man passed Gee’s checkout aisle to head to the nearby exit. Gee said that the man looked down her checkout aisle, and then the woman crossed all the way to the opposite end of where she checked out.
“I just had this eerie feeling, like we were being watched and that they were working together,” Gee suspected. Because of her unease, she asked the grocery store manager to walk them out to the parking lot.
“I went home and cried,” Gee said. Although nothing untoward happened to the mother and son, Gee still felt uncomfortable about the situation. Being followed and pressured by strangers can be an unpleasant experience, and it’s possible that Gee’s awareness and quick thinking kept her and her son safe.
(featured images: Edgar Colomba, Brooklynn Gee, Pâm Santos)
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