Possible child abduction at Houston grocery store caught on camera
HOUSTON -- Houston Police are investigating a possible attempted child abduction.
Eyewitness News was the first to obtain surveillance video from H-Mart grocery store on Bellaire that shows the scene.
In the video you see the mother, Florence Monauer, in a grocery store aisle with her infant daughter in the cart next to her.
The mother turns her head away for a matter of seconds and then the video shows a man walk up to the 14-month-old and pick her up.
The man was unable to get the child out of the grocery cart seat because the child was strapped in.
The child's mother had a seat cover in the cart. Her daughter was strapped to the seat cover and the seat cover was strapped to the cart.
"She was attached to the shopping cart cover and I think if it weren't for that cover he probably would have taken off with her all together," said Florence Monauer, the mother.
Monauer grabbed her daughter out of the cart after noticing the man attempting to pick her up. Then, the video shows the man try to take the child out of the mother's hands.
According to Monauer, the man did not say anything to her during the incident. She told Eyewitness News she heard him say to the child, "If your mom wasn't here, I would take you."
Houston Police say they are looking into this case as a possible attempted abduction. The man has not been identified or charged with a crime.
We showed the surveillance video to Beth Alberts, the CEO for Texas Center for the Missing. Alberts said while stranger child abductions are rare, abductors seem to be more brazen than before.
"We're getting at preventing these types of things, that people that truly want to go to these measures have to me more and more desperate and more and more risk-taker," said Beth Alberts, the CEO of the Texas Center for the Missing.
The FBI has created an app called Child ID that allows you to store photos and information about your child. Plus, if something does ever happen and you need to share that information, you can send it directly to law enforcement.
