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A Texas woman has been arrested and charged with attempted kidnapping after trying to take a toddler from his mother inside the bathroom at H-E-B.
It all went down at the H-E-B located in the 1300 block of W. Adams Avenue in Temple shortly after noon on October 23, according to KWTX. The mother, Megan Weathersbee, told the news outlet that she was targeted by the suspect, Ashley Chandelle Allen.
Weathersbee said she went to H-E-B to pick up a prescription. "My son was holding my hand and we went into the store walking together and stopped at the restroom," she said. Inside the restroom, Weathersbee and her son went into the large handicap stall. "Out of no where this lady crawls under my stall," she continued, adding that she asked the woman if she was "lost" or "confused."
"She grabs (my son’s) wrist and starts cussing at me yelling all these obscene things and says ‘Give me my baby. Give me my baby or I will kill you,'" Weathersbee recalled of the incident. The mother was able to get her son safely out of the stall and into the store, where she started yelling to employees that "she's trying to kidnap my kid."
She was instructed to run into the H-E-B manager's office and an employee blocked the doorway to keep Allen away. Employees called the police, who responded quickly to the incident. Temple Police Department officers were dispatched to the grocery store to confront the "erratic woman," the news outlet reported, but she reportedly tried to run away. "After a chase around the grocery store, officers cornered her and detained her," police said.
Allen was charged with attempted kidnapping and injury to a child and was booked into the Bell County Hail.
"I am nervous to go to any store now. I will be doing curbside pickup and having my prescriptions delivered," Weathersbee said.