A Woman Shares a Harrowing Story of a Time She and Her Kids Were Followed While Driving

Emily, who goes by @illnvrmakeatiktok on TikTok, really burst onto the platform's scene with her first two TikToks which were uploaded in April 2023. The California mom was called to action after hearing a horrific story about a woman who was assaulted by three men after they flagged her down while on the side of a road.

While Emily's story isn't exactly the same, it's another example of how being a woman in the world is often a dangerous thing to be. Let's get into what happened.

On Christmas day in December 2020, Emily along with her husband, their children, and the family dog were visiting relatives in Hollister, Calif.

Emily and her family lived in Carmel, Calif. Because her husband had to go back for work, they had taken two cars to get to Hollister.

Early that morning at 8 a.m., Emily began the drive from Hollister back to her house Carmel with her kids and their pup, which takes about 45 minutes. The plan was to spend Christmas at the house in Carmel with Emily's parents. Because of the holiday, the roads were completely empty.

As she was leaving Hollister, Emily took note of a white car following her but didn't think anything of it. As she was merging onto a new road, she saw that it was just her and the white car on the road at this time. Naturally Emily barely blinked because hey, it was a holiday after all.

Things changed right as Emily's car reached a point where you can turn either left or right. Two large black cars pulled up behind her. While this was happening, the white car pulled up next to Emily at which point she saw about four men inside. "Every seat was filled," she said.

Suddenly, the large black cars trailing behind began flashing their lights. "I was immediately like 'Oh my gosh, they are trying to run me off the road.'" She then said, "Fight or flight kicks in, and I'm just pedal to the metal," pushing the car to 110 mph; all while the large black vehicles are keeping up.

This is normally an area monitored by California Highway Patrol (CHP), which is what Emily was banking on. One of the cars exited, but the others were inches from Emily's vehicle. "I really do think that if they wanted to, they could have hit my car and run me off the road," she said. When she got to Prunedale, there were other cars on the road which forced the white car and the large black car to ease up.

The road Emily was speeding down is very curvy, so she had to concentrate on staying as safe as possible for the sake of her two children and the dog in the car. To make matters worse, it wasn't Emily's car so she couldn't call anyone but the preset numbers, and 911 was not one of the preset numbers. Imagine being on the receiving end of one of those distraught voicemails.

Emily finally exited and pulled over to a safe spot in order to call police. CHP told her that that it's not uncommon for women to be driving alone on Christmas morning, and that the drivers probably expected that. This was clearly a deeply upsetting incident, which left Emily wary about driving. She warned other women to always be aware of their surroundings.

In a third TikTok, Emily answered a couple of questions asked by folks who commented on her first two videos. The biggest one was a need for clarification surrounding her inability to call 911 while being chased. "I didn't call 911 because the 2013 Subaru I was driving didn't have the capabilities to call numbers other than your preset, saved numbers."

Some were curious about a voice activation option and in particular Siri. "I didn't have it turned on," explained Emily. "I personally really despise Siri. I don't like when it accidentally thinks you're talking to it." She absolutely has it turned on now.

Emily was also not willing to take her hands off the wheel at such a fast speed. Normally Emily only goes 5 or 10 miles over the speed limit. This was excessive. Finally, far too many people asked about a gun which Emily quickly shut down. California requires people to have a Carry Concealed Weapon (CCW) license, which Emily did not.