PASADENA, Texas—A Pasadena preteen is dealing with a sticky situation after she says a man sprayed superglue into her hair while she was shopping with her grandparents at a drug store.

It happened last Thursday on the greeting card aisle at the Walgreens in the 3700 block of Spencer Highway.

“He walked right beside me and started looking at the cards,” said the teen, who doesn’t want to be identified. “I felt very uncomfortable and I knew something was wrong.”

The next thing she knew her hair was sticking to her shirt. The 12-year-old says she felt a wad of glue in her ponytail.

“When I touched my hair, it was hot, it was like sizzling on my hair,” she said.

The middle school student ran to tell her grandparents, who were shopping nearby. Management rushed over and called police. They learned the hair bandit had struck before.  It had happened earlier in the day to a woman at the same Walgreens. A third report came from a Kroger grocery store across the street.

“I’ve got to say it’s unusual to the extent that in the course of my career I have never heard of any assault quite like this particular incident,” said Asst. Chief Bud Corbett of the Pasadena Police Department. “Each one of the victims reported that prior to the discovery that they had had glue deposited in their hair that this individual was following them around the store.”

The 12-year-old had to cut off some of her hair.  Some of it just fell out.  Her family fears what might happen next.

“Today it was this,” said her grandfather Celestino Perez. “Maybe tomorrow it’ll be acid and when that thrill is no longer a thrill for this sick person what’s going to be next.”

Police said the suspect could face assault charges if he’s ever caught.