Women at Malls are Being Tricked Into Dangerous Situations by Clever Abductors–Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
The TV show INSIDE EDITION is said to have featured some of the ways that women are abducted from shopping malls. The show staged several examples in which women were, for example, offered a spontaneous opportunity to act or appear in a TV commercial, then were lured outside to their doom or asked to urgently come help a baby who had stopped breathing. The email also describes an alleged incident at a mall in Ohio in which a women who discovered a flat tire was offered help by a man on the scene. She became suspicious, resisted his offers to accompany him to his car on the other side of the mall and later discovered that the air had been intentionally let out of her tire and that the man had left behind a briefcase with a knife and a rope in it.
The Truth:
It pays to be cautious and there are stories of women who have been accosted in public places, but this email is not based on true accounts. The INSIDE EDITION show did take place and did demonstrate how easily people can be lured into a risky situation, but was not based on any actual events. There is no record of the Ohio story. Also, most versions of this eRumor have not included the J.C. Penny reference. That is a recent addition. If this ever was circulated by a J.C. Penny office, it’s likely that it was a version of the original rumor.