An alleged evening-time sexual assault at a popular Valencia grocery store last week prompted a warning from the victim about situational awareness, especially for someone who may feel vulnerable.
The alleged victim shared disturbing details Monday about an encounter she had at Whole Foods Market on March 23, which was spread over social media through screenshots over this past weekend.
The victim said she hopes that sharing what she experienced that evening, from her arrival at the Whole Foods parking lot until the moment of the assault, could give others a better sense of what to look out for and what signs could precede an attack in a public space.
The reported battery at one of her usual stops — where she knows some of the staff as a regular, she said Monday — left her shaken and worried for her safety, especially knowing the suspect has not been contacted by law enforcement yet.
Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station officials did not respond to a request for comment on this incident as of the publication of this story.
She also said there were several warning signs that she dismissed during the incident, which she felt could serve as a lesson to others.
She said her first interaction with the suspect occurred outside the store, when she walked by two men, one of them being the suspect, as she parked her car and walked into the store.
When she went inside the store and began to shop around, she felt a man later identified as the assailant following her and continually moving “in her personal space.”
She said her first instinct was to ignore it and move away, but as she did, the suspect became more and more aggressive in the invasion of her personal space.
Since her first thought was, “This person must want the same protein bars as me,” she moved along to something else nearby she needed, she said.
Then, she could still feel him hovering over her, she said, and began to think something weird was going on.
“The perception was, ‘I’m just trying to get out of this person’s way,’” she recalled in a phone interview Monday. “I went to the fridge section and I opened the door and I elbowed someone and it was him,” she said referring to the man she had just described hovering over her.
She said she apologized and then walked to another aisle, where he approached her again, and this time she thought he might try to talk to her.
He didn’t, and so she went back to looking up brands of honey for their various nutritional values.
She felt more of an encroachment from the stranger, but at that point, she was so into her phone, she said, she didn’t realize what he was doing when she felt him reach around her.
“He was acting like he was coming around me to grab something,” she said, remembering that she had asked him if she was in his way, and he said he was trying to decide which honey to buy.
She felt “something warm” touch her ear, but she told herself she was imagining things, while she was crouched and comparing the health information for filtered versus unfiltered honey.
But that’s when the suspect really creeped her out, she said, and she began to feel more certain that the suspect had just exposed himself.
“And then he said to me, ‘Oh, are you not going to buy your filtered or unfiltered honey?’” she recalled him saying as she stood up.
The suspect was standing over her close enough to read what she had typed on her phone.
At that point she wasn’t sure if she “should run or play it cool,” so she walked down toward the butcher’s counter, her heart racing, feeling a panic.
Security footage she later reviewed with store officials and the Sheriff’s Station confirmed her fears, she said: It showed the suspect putting his genitalia on her ear.
The SCV Sheriff’s Station put out a news release but no arrests have been made yet.
“I just don’t feel safe right now,” she said Monday. “I also just want to point out a reminder to women to scan your environment and to keep that situational awareness.”
In previous news reports, station officials have offered a similar caution, amid a fairly recent increase in instances where victims were spotted and followed to their cars as potential robbery victims, after making big deposits at banks or purchases at stores. Those types of incidents are called “jugging” by law enforcement officials.
Anyone who may recognize this individual or who has information related to this incident is asked to contact Detective Roxanne Hatami at 661-260-4000, ext. 5620. Those wishing to provide information anonymously may contact LA Crime Stoppers by calling 800-222-TIPS (8477) or visiting lacrimestoppers.org.
