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California store owner rushes to save baby from getting snatched in viral video

A woman kept chasing the baby and her guardians, before finally a store's owner came rushing out to help them

SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA: In a video that has gone viral, surveillance cameras have captured footage of the moment when a woman approached another woman who was pushing a baby in a stroller outside a California store and attempted to steal the child. As two unnamed women walked down a Sacramento-area street, a third woman stepped in and began yelling, "Give me my baby!" The two women, startled, began walking away but the third woman kept chasing them before finally, the store's owner came rushing out to help them.

The owner of Express Smog Pros in Sacramento, Ashraf Ali, said that all he could hear was the woman yelling. "I try my best running to the baby, and I protect the baby," Ali recalled. "And she was shouting, and she was saying, 'This is my baby!'"

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The pursuer tried to continuously wrest the stroller away from those who were trying to protect it. The baby was reportedly not that of the woman who claimed she/he was hers. "She come back and she again shouting, 'Hey, my baby, give me my baby,' so I said, 'No, don't touch baby,'" Ali said, adding that it was likely that the unnamed woman would start hitting him if she had not been stopped.

This was the moment when a second Good Samaritan rushed to help Ali protect the child. The second individual dialed 911. "Traffic, people stopped traffic, but she saw everybody stopping and she jumped through the traffic too, it was crazy. I didn't know what she would do with baby," Ali described. "We are human, you know, we have to save everyone, if you see something wrong, at least you have to try." The child is now safe at home with family. A woman named Dedra Gentry had reportedly been arrested in connection with the incident and is now facing a felony charge of attempted kidnapping.

In a similar recent incident, a 27-year-old New York City homeless man was charged with kidnapping after attempting to snatch a three-year-old from her grandmother's arms on October 11, 2021. Santiago Salcedo was caught on surveillance footage attempting to run away with the child before other witnesses gave chance and stopped the crime from happening. The incident occurred outside a BP gas station at the corner of E. Tremont and Baisley Aves. in Schuylerville.

The near-kidnapping is part of a massive crime wave plaguing NYC this year. On September 2, a Brooklyn woman was caught on footage throwing boiling water, then stabbing a deaf man in Williamsburg. A few days later, a man kicked a woman down an escalator at the Atlantic Avenue Barclays Center Station. On October 4, we reported on the video of a woman pushing a commuter towards an oncoming train at Times Square subway station.