A stranger complimented her baby at Target. Then they almost got abducted in the parking lot

While shopping at her local Target, Kayla said three men cornered her car. She believes she was almost abducted in the parking lot with her child. Khandee (@justkhandee) shared Kayla’s story on TikTok.

“Four people tried to steal my baby at a Target parking lot, and this just happened four days ago. I know that it sounds insane, but the part that keeps really, really bothering me is that the entire time, I was ignoring my intuition and I was trying to convince myself that I was just being paranoid,” Khandee told TikTok, reenacting Kayla’s story.

Kayla placed her daughter in the shopping cart seat while perusing the diaper aisle at Target. Kayla noticed another woman in the aisle with a baby strapped to her chest. The woman looked over and smiled at Kayla.

“Oh, she’s so cute. How old is she?” the stranger asked. Kayla answered with her daughter’s age. The woman shared that her daughter had just turned ten months old.

“It just seemed like a normal mom conversation,” Khandee recalled Kayla’s words. When the stranger asked if Kayla’s daughter was her first child, she said no. The woman complimented her child’s eyes, and the conversation ended there. Kayla wasn’t suspicious of the woman, seeing the stranger as a fellow mother. Eventually, the two women parted ways and continued their grocery shopping.

Although she was comfortable with the stranger, Kayla later observed a man at the end of her aisle. She assumed he was related to the woman from earlier, until two other men started orbiting her and her child inside Target. “So, there are now three guys, her, and a baby. And this is where I start to get the feeling that something was off, and I really couldn’t actually explain why,” Khandee narrated.

Being watched at the grocery aisles

Khandee clarified that Kayla wasn’t explicitly being followed. However, one of the four people would always be close by whenever she went to another aisle. Kayla felt disturbed, despite the subtlety, and decided to test a theory. She veered off course and returned to the toy section, pretending to stare at something. Kayla claimed that about 30 seconds later, one of the men appeared at the end of the toy aisle. She said the man didn’t look or stop and merely passed by.

@justkhandee

This video has reached way beyond my normal audience, so I just want to add a little context for anyone who is new here. Skin Crawl Stories is a storytelling series where I share viewer-submitted experiences. Some stories are told in first person and some are retellings, depending on how the person submitting it wants their story told. My page explains that I share viewer-submitted stories, and at the end of this video I specifically say that this is Kayla’s story. I share these stories as they are submitted to me. I’m not independently investigating or verifying every detail unless I specifically say that I have. Lastly, I’ve reached out to Kayla because there have been a lot of questions in the comments that I don’t have the answers to, and I cannot speak on her behalf. If/when I hear back and have more information, I’ll update you guys. #scary #storytime #fyp #scarystories

♬ original sound – JustKhandee?

Kayla was frustrated with herself and assumed she was overthinking the situation. While she was at the counter, Kayla said she saw the woman with the baby checking out just a few registers away. Kayla made eye contact and smiled at her. But this time, the woman did not smile back. Kayla shrugged off the awkward interaction and went to the parking lot.

As she was heading to her vehicle, she saw a black van parked beside her driver’s door. Kayla noted that the van was parked too close and that she would have to squeeze herself in.

Then Kayla felt a surge of panic when she saw something tucked beneath her windshield wiper. She explained that she’s seen enough videos online about ill-intentioned people leaving notes on windshields to distract their targets before doing something unspeakable. While she didn’t know if that modus operandi was true, Kayla said she wasn’t interested in finding out. But suspiciously enough, she also saw two zip ties on her door handle.

Getting chased out of a Target parking lot

She started looking around the parking lot, and then one of the men from Target started walking toward her. She looked elsewhere, and the two other men from the store were coming in from another direction. Kayla said she no longer cared if she seemed “crazy.” She hurriedly went to the passenger door of her car and got in with her baby.

One of the men finally got close enough and was motioning for her to roll down her window. Kayla believed the man was mouthing something about her tire, but she refused to roll down her window. Then, the other man angled his shopping cart in front of her car, as if to block her. Kayla, finding the situation uncomfortable, didn’t care if she’d have to run the cart over. She hit the gas and drove away from Target, and from the corner of her eye, she saw the woman with the baby talking to one of the three men. Regardless, Kayla got away, sobbing with her daughter.

Once Kayla pulled over to a busy gas station, she called her husband to tell him about the harrowing encounter. While parked, she decided to check her tire. She found nothing wrong with it, contrary to what one of the men was saying. At times, it’s best to overthink a situation rather than not at all. One woman from Chicago, who overthought an encounter in a university parking lot, doesn’t regret doing so even after being mocked by a “friend.”

Have a tip we should know? [email protected]