Diandra Toyos was doing the furniture dance many of us do at IKEA. But while testing out couches with her mother and three children, she got the feeling that something wasn't right.
"After a few minutes, I noticed a well-dressed, middle aged man circling the area, getting closer to me and the kids…My mom noticed as well and mentioned that we need to keep an eye on him” she said.
When they moved, he moved. "At one point he came right up to me and the boys, and instinctively I put myself between he and my mobile son," she wrote.
The women decided to play it safe by sitting and waiting for the gentlemen to move on, but they didn't. "We sat in one of the little display rooms [for] close to 30 minutes," Toyos explained. "And they sat too. They sat down on one of the couches on the display floor that faced us." This continued for the better part of an hour, until Toyos's mother made a bold move and made eye contact to let them know that they saw them.
They managed to shake the men at that point, after speaking to an IKEA employee and using the bathroom. Toyos then immediately contacted IKEA security.
Toyos wrote that she is "almost sure that we were the targets of human trafficking." After the incident, Toyos took to Facebook to call other parents to attention and to educate how to best handle stalking in a public place. "When you're in a public place with your kids, please be aware and present so that you don't become a victim," she wrote. "This is happening all over, including the United States. It's in our backyards."
Her post has since gone viral — it has been shared nearly 100,000 times and has over 14,000 comments.