A Colorado woman was forced to subdue and restrain an alleged “peeping Tom” in a department store dressing room on Saturday after noticing creepy behavior while she was trying on clothes.
Michelle Chandler posted a video to Instagram of the disturbing incident, which took place at Nordstrom in Lakewood, showing her pinning a young man to the ground after she said he recorded her inappropriately.
“Ladies, please be alert,” the mother-of-five wrote in the caption of the post, which included a photo and clip of her wrestling the suspect into submission.
“No thanks to gender-neutral fitting rooms, this man was able to film me while trying on clothes,” Chandler said. “Sadly, employees who tried to help were asked to ‘remove themselves from the situation.’ I held this guy in a headlock against a wall for almost 20 minutes!”
Police finally showed up and “detained him,” Chandler said, adding that the man had a knife on him and that she was “pressing charges.”
“I can’t imagine what all is on his phone or how many women he has violated,” she continued in her social media post. “I’m shocked at bystanders (men) who filmed and took pictures but didn’t do a thing to help.”
“THIS HAS TO STOP!!!!! Men don’t belong in women’s fitting rooms, bathrooms, locker rooms, [or] women’s sports teams,” she added.
In an interview with KDVR-TV, Chandler said she was doing some Mother’s Day shopping on Saturday when she caught the man.
“As I went to take these pants off, I bent down, and I looked over, and I saw men’s shoes, socks, and his phone pointing right at me,” she recalled.
Instead of letting the suspect escape before police arrived, she took matters into her own hands.
“I grabbed him, threw him down on the ground, put my knee in his back, and held his head down,” Chandler explained.
She added that the suspect was 19 years old.
“You need to be held accountable,” the mom said. “It’s not okay what he did.”