A concerned father has taken to TikTok after noticing a terrifying detail on his daughter’s car.
User @boogeyman0302 filmed the now viral TikTok writing “pay attention” over the clip. It has attracted more than 26 million views.
“So, listen. I don’t care if you agree with a lot of my videos or not. But I definitely want you to pay attention to this one.” he says in the video as he walks towards his daughter’s car.
He explains that his daughter works in a city and usually finishes work at 3 a.m. and drives home. However, he’s noticed something strange on on the handle of her car for the past three mornings — a black zip tie.
“I didn’t know what it was, I just kept cutting it off,” he says, showing the zip tie, which is always in the exact same spot.
“‘I asked her, I said ‘what’s the deal with the zip tie being on your back passenger handle every morning? For the past three mornings, I’ve cut it off,’
“She said that ‘I don’t know what in the world I was talking about,’” he said.
It wasn’t until the man was talking with his brother — who works in law enforcement — that he realized the zip-ties could actually be something sinister.
“I mentioned [the zip ties] he got extremely silent,” he says, adding that he told him to immediately cut the tags off.
“[He said] sex traffickers and people that basically steal vulnerable women put that on a car somewhere where it’s not easily noticeable for them,” the dad notes. “But other people who actually do the stealing know exactly what that means.”
According to the man’s brother, the ties are basically used as signals to show sex traffickers or abductors that someone is alone and an easy target.
“It lets them know that this person is vulnerable, they are by themselves,” he explained.
The dad finishes his clip by urging commenters to always be on high alert.
“f you’ve got teenage girls that are out late at night that are driving, check their car every morning,” he says. “Look for a black zip tie or anything that stands out, and immediately remove it.”