DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — A great-grandmother says she was traumatized after a man slapped her violently on her backside while she was grocery shopping.
And she says she learned two other women may have been attacked while shopping nearby.
Mae St. Julien says she thought she was safe while shopping. She soon found out that was far from the truth.
“It made a loud noise. like a gunshot almost,” she told Channel 2’s Tom Jones on Channel 2 Action News at 6:00 p.m.
St. Julien says nothing like this had ever happened to her.
“To me, it was a form of sexual assault to be hit in that spot,” she said.
The 73-year-old great grandmother says she was pushing her basket on aisle 3 in the Kroger in Ellenwood on Flat Shoals Parkway Feb. 26 around 4:30 that afternoon.
“I’m just minding my business shopping for a recipe I found on Tik Tok,” St. Julien said.
That’s when a young man came up behind her and smacked her hard on her backside.
She says her attacker then seemed proud of what he had just done.
“He turned around and kind of smirked and just ran off,” she said.
St. Julien says she was stunned, hurt, traumatized and angry.
When police arrived, she says an officer told her she had just finished investigating a similar incident where a man attacked two women at the grocery store across the street.
“He hit them on the behind and ran,” she said.
This incident has scarred St. Julien, saying she may need to talk to a counselor about it.
St. Julien wants to raise awareness about the incident, and she wants her attacker off the streets.
“I want him to be caught, to be stopped,” she said.
DeKalb County police say they are investigating this incident. But they say they have no record of the incident across the street at that grocery store.
Those women may not have chosen to pursue charges.
St. Julien says she had shopped at this Kroger for more than 20 years. But now she won’t be coming back.
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