A California Woman Accused a Father of Trafficking His Own Daughter Over Their Skin Tones, Then Told Him to ‘Burn in Hell’

A California father says a woman he’d never met accused him of trafficking his own daughter because of their different skin tones, then followed the pair through their San Jose neighborhood on multiple occasions. According to WIVB, the father, who asked to remain anonymous, described himself as a man of color, while his daughter is half white.

He told KRON4 he was walking behind his daughter, who was riding her bike ahead of him, when the woman pulled her silver Honda Fit alongside her briefly before approaching him. “Are you buying or selling today?” she asked, then repeated the question and drove off. Minutes later, he said she circled back and asked whether he was “even legal in the country,” which is when he started recording.

In the video, the woman tells him, “I’m recording you too, I work with the feds,” before adding, “Have a good day, I’m just making sure you’re not sex trafficking this poor little girl, who’s very unhappy to be with you and doesn’t look like your child.” She goes on to say she believes he’s “buying or selling or trafficking this child” because he’s “a man of color” and the girl is white, then claims, “We’ve got facial recognition.”

Why California’s stalking law may not cleanly apply here

The father recorded her license plate and a sticker on her rear window. He said she briefly tried engaging with his daughter again before driving off toward what he recognized as a dead-end block. Betting she’d double back, he kept recording. In the second clip, she returns, slows near them, and says, “Psalm 101:8, my daily task will be to ferret out the wicked and free the city of God from their grip,” before adding, “Burn in hell, you will.”

Whether this rises to criminal stalking under California law is a closer question than it might seem. Penal Code 646.9 requires both a pattern of following or harassment and a credible threat, one specific enough that a reasonable person would fear for their safety. Repeated encounters across a short window could satisfy the following element, but her comments, while alarming and clearly intended to unsettle, don’t obviously spell out a specific threat of physical harm, which is the harder element for prosecutors to prove.

Her claim to “work with the feds” raises a separate issue. Under 18 U.S.C. § 912, falsely claiming to be a federal officer or employee is a federal crime, though courts have generally required more than the bare statement alone, some overt act consistent with the claim, before prosecution becomes realistic. Publicly and repeatedly accusing someone of a serious crime like trafficking, without evidence, can also expose a person to a civil defamation claim if the accusation turns out to be false and causes real reputational harm.

The father said he filed a police report with the San Jose Police Department, and KRON4 said it has reached out to the department for more information. The woman has not been identified, and there’s no indication anyone has been able to reach her for comment.