Woman shares warning after discovering shirt on windshield

A young woman's warning that you can never be too careful while alone in a dark parking lot is going viral.

Ashely Hardacre said she was frightened but unharmed after discovering a shirt on her windshield. She had gotten into her car after working a late shift at a mall in Flint, Michigan, when she noticed the flannel clothing, which was wrapped around the windshield wiper. She tried to use her wipers to get it off, but it was buttoned and tightly wrapped.

"It had to have been intentional the way it was put on there," Hardacre reflected on Facebook.

Hardacre noticed a car running nearby, and she remembered warnings she had seen online.

"I had seen posts lately about people finding things under their windshield wipers in the burton/Flint area as an attempt to get girls out of their cars and distracted," she wrote.

Hardacre told ABC12 in Flint that her mom had repeated that warning, but she never expected to be confronted with the situation.

"It is something that you never expect that would ever happen to you, or that someone would try to harm you in any way," she said.

Hardacre drove to a safe location before removing the shirt. She said she planned to inform security and ask for them to escort her to her car in the future.

In less than a week, her warning has been shared more than 100,000 times.

In 2014, the Maryland attorney general's office warned of a similar potential scam in which a $100 bill would be placed on the windshield. When the driver got out to retrieve it, that would give potential thieves an opportunity to steal the car.

"We don't want to scare people, but we do want you to be careful," Asst. Attorney General - Consumer Protection Karen Straughn said at the time.

Editorial note: The Facebook post that was previously embedded in this story is no longer a public Facebook post.