SHAWNEE, Kansas (WHDH) — A Kansas mother thought a stranger in a Target store was joking when she offered to trade a dog for her baby until that stranger allegedly began to walk away with the infant.
Rachel Youngs was in the baby section of the store with her daughter when a woman with a dog walked up to her.
“She made a comment saying, ‘yeah, I’ll trade you my dog for your baby,’ and I thought she was just joking,” she said.
After speaking with the stranger who she called “nice,” Youngs said she let her hold her baby, a decision she immediately regretted.
“While she’s holding my baby, she started saying weird things,” Youngs recalled. “She starts 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?”
The stranger then allegedly told Youngs that she had been arrested for attempted kidnapping before she walked off with her daughter.
“I yelled to her,” Youngs said. “I said, ‘I need my baby back, please. Give me my baby back.'”
She says the woman hesitated for a second, then handed over her infant.
Youngs asked employees to call police but when officers arrived, they told her there was nothing they could do.
“They just said, ‘well, there’s nothing we can really do because you technically gave her permission to hold your baby,'” she said, “and my exact words were, ‘okay, so me giving her permission to hold my baby for a couple minutes gives her permission to take off with my child?'”
Police say they know the woman in question are still investigating.
Youngs said she’ll think twice the next time a stranger walks up to her.
“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,” she said.
Youngs added that she is worried the woman may do the same thing to another mother.
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