Shopper, sales associated groped inside Smyrna store

A woman said she was assault while shopping for groceries in Smyrna on Sunday.

"While I'm looking down at my phone he just comes up and rubs up against my body," Kay Payton said.

Payton said the bold assailant made his move as she was shopping in the spice aisle.

"I asked him why he was touching me and he shrugged me off and kept walking," Payton said.

The Instacart worker was filling an order at the Publix on Atlanta Road in Smyrna the unidentified man came up behind her.

"I was grabbing things from one of the aisles and a man quickly walked past me very closely and rubbed his whole hand up my body and kept walking," Payton said.

She was stunned and immediately confronted him. 

"I can't repeat what I said because I used a lot of curse words, but I did look him in the face and asked him if he knew me to be touching me like that, and he just shrugged me off and kept walking," she said.

She immediately reported the incident to store employees, pointing out the assailant who was still in the store, and called 911. She soon learned she wasn't his only victim. 

"When I was speaking outside to the store manager, one of their associates who was just clocking in for the day said he touched her right in the main entrance to the store. It's on camera," she said. "In the video, you see him rubbing up on the associate in the main entrance, like right after the first set of sliding doors."

The man left the area on foot before officers arrived on scene.

"I was able to point the guy out. They followed him out of the store when he got to the corner he disappeared," she said. "It just makes me uncomfortable and unsafe that somebody is so willing to do that in public in a grocery store."