Many of us are at the age that when we grew up, we were often warned about stranger danger and the ill-intent that some people who seemed innocent had when they interacted with us.
While those lessons tended to avoid any graphic details, they did make it clear that we could be kidnapped, hurt, or worse if one of these predators happened to catch us unaware.
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Such concerns are why my mother made sure that someone was always waiting at the bus stop for me when I was a kid. However, they’re also why kids are taught to stay vigilant about their surroundings when they go to and from school.
And from the events of some compiled security footage from Russia, it’s clear that one little girl took this lesson to heart and thought quickly enough to protect herself.
As the video begins, we can see the child buzzing into her building and waiting for access.
While she’s waiting, we can also see the man in the background dawdle around the sidewalk before approaching the building’s front steps.
When the girl is able to open the door, he’s close enough behind that he can catch it before it closes and follow her in.
And indeed, as she traverses the hallway, we can see faintly see his leg poking through the open door in the top right corner.
Later on in the video, John Correia of the group Active Self Protection recommends that children do their best to close the door behind them when they go inside apartment buildings so suspicious individuals can’t enter after them.
Once she leaves the frame, we can see the man from before following her.
Although he keeps his distance, we find him taking the same path as her and his intentions become particularly clear when they both reach the building’s elevators.
At first, the girl appears to start walking towards the elevators but quickly changes course and walks into an alcove in the back of this hallway.
Since she crosses in front of the man on her way to this spot, he’s aware that she’s there yet pretends to call the elevator and ignore her.
But as we can faintly see behind the timestamp, she soon moves out of this corner when he isn’t looking.
From there, the child walks back down the way she came and passes through the hallway we saw before.
Before long, she keeps going on this path and exits the building completely.
At this point in the video, it isn’t immediately clear what she left the building to do.
But after the child leaves, the man by the elevator clearly starts to wonder where she went.
At which point, he makes it obvious that he wasn’t trying to get to any particular floor and traces her steps back out the front door as well.
But once he steps out of the building, it becomes clear both to him and to the viewer what the little girl was doing while she was out.
We can see her approaching the door once again, this time with another adult in tow.
Realizing that his attempt to tail her has been foiled, the man then walks out of frame and presumably leaves the area.
According to Correia, the man was then apprehended by police upon review of the footage.
Correia praises the girl’s clever ideas here but also shares some further advice for anyone else whose kids live under similar “latchkey kid” circumstances as she does.
Both the encounter and his advice can be seen in the full video.
