OWNINGS MILLS, Md. — It was around one o’clock in the afternoon on Labor Day when a woman we will only identify as “Ivory” as a precaution for her safety says she entered the Giant supermarket on Mill Run Circle in Owings Mills and realized someone was following her.
“I noticed that he was following me pretty much as soon as I came in the store so I kind of was looking over my shoulder any way,” Ivory told WMAR-2 News.
She thought she had lost him when she headed down the frozen vegetables aisle, when he suddenly reappeared behind her.
“When I went to say something to him, because I was kind of wondering like, ‘Why are you following me?’ He stopped me and in a disguised voice said, ‘Excuse me, ma’am. Excuse me. There’s something on your pants”, and I knew there wasn’t anything on my pants, but I looked anyway and I went to touch it and before I could get my hand to my face, I became dizzy and dazed and out of it.”
When the mysterious man asked if she was going to wipe the substance off her clothing, she brushed him off in her disoriented state.
“I think I got my item,” she recalled. “I remember him walking by. I remember walking out of the aisle trying to get to somebody. I remember touching it again to see if it would make be dizzy as it did before, and I really don’t remember what happened, but I remember going to the associate and saying, ‘Hey, that guy just sprayed something on me.’”
Ivory headed home, fearful the stranger may attempt to follow her, and bagged up her clothing and showered before returning to the store to speak to a supervisor about reviewing security footage.
They advised her to file a police report, and she did, but she claims an officer who pledged to investigate never asked for her affected clothing to test the substance and never requested the security footage as promised.
She put out a warning on social media to alert others that the man who allegedly assaulted her remains at large.
“Hey, be careful. This happened to me. I didn’t want to make a big fuss out of it. I just kind of wanted them to do their job and get it over with, but here I am,” she told us.
When we contacted the Baltimore County police to check out Ivory’s story, they told us detectives have now obtained the video from the store and are reviewing it.
They are seeking any information, which could identify the man shown in the video approaching the woman so they can question him, although they’re not calling him a suspect, at least for now.
