Charges for Bay Area mom influencer whose alleged kidnapping story went viral
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A screenshot of a video posted by Katie Sorensen, who alleged a couple attempted to kidnap her children in a parking lot in Petaluma on Dec. 7, 2020. Police say there is no evidence to corroborate her claims and have cleared the couple in question.Screenshot via Instagram @motherhoodessentials
An aspiring Bay Area mom influencer has been charged after police say she falsely claimed her children were the target of kidnapping attempt in December.
Katie Sorensen, who lives in Sonoma, was charged last week with two counts of making false reports, one to a police dispatcher and one to a police officer. Each charge has a maximum penalty of six months in jail. The news was first reported by the Petaluma Argus-Courier.
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Petaluma police re-interviewed Sorensen after her video went viral, and authorities said in a Dec. 17 press release that she was definitive that the couple approached her children’s stroller and that the male reached for it; she stated she would testify to that fact, and that she wanted the couple prosecuted.
According to authorities, they were able to identify the couple after reviewing images from the store s security camera and the pair promptly responded, agreed to be interviewed, and have fully cooperated with the investigation. While acknowledging they had shopped at Michael’s and were the couple shown in the photograph, they denied the allegations being made against them by the reporting party, the Petaluma Police Department said in a statement.
A California mother-of-three is being investigated for a possible hate crime over a video in which she claimed a Latino couple made a kidnapping attempt on her children.
Katie Sorensen posted two videos to her account @motherhoodessentials in which she claimed son, four, and daughter, one, were the targets of attempted kidnap in a Michael s store in Petaluma on December 7.
Sorensen drove to the police station to report the couple s actions and press charges before uploading the videos, which gained her more than 80,000 followers.
After the couple came forward, Petaluma police cleared Sadie and Eddie Martinez of any wrongdoing on Thursday and launched a new investigation into whether the crime was falsely reported or if her social media posts constitute a hate crime.