GAINES TOWNSHIP, Mich. (WOOD) — If you want to define the cliché ‘a  parent’s worst nightmare,’ this may be it: A mom says she scared away a  man trying to steal her baby from a shopping cart in the parking lot of  the Gaines Township Target store.

But it wasn’t a call to 911 that got the Kent County Sheriff’s Department involved — it was a Facebook post, and it went viral.

“We become concerned when we see reports like this one the internet  just like everybody else does,” Kent County Undersheriff Michelle Young  said.

Wednesday afternoon, detectives talked to the person who made the  original post. She maintains the incident happened but said that at the  time, she wasn’t sure how to interpret the man’s actions. She just  wanted to get the word out to others, so she posted her story on social  media.

The undersheriff says she should have called authorities “and let that story get vetted.”