<p>Guess many of us have had a crime expereince one time or another. Some mild some S-C-A-R-Y.
I was robbed at gunpoint once 21 yrs ago in my own neighborhood. I</p>
<p>sorry;… I pulled into the local commuter train station with the kids in the car about 6 pm in a January to pick up husband. The kids got out of their car seats, they were little and were playing in the back.Two kids, out of nowhere, came up to my car windshield and knocked on the glass with a gun aimed at me. They said ‘open up’ and I was SO SCARED I did, I mean my real fear was they would shoot, so I opened the door. They were young, like 16-18 and had on sweatshirts with hoods and hats. I couldn’t see well and I just started to ball . But they knew just what they wanted and said “give us the purse.” I was balling so hard I hardly could give it to them. After they had my purse they took off. I sat there crying and then went to the nearest house, like 50 ft from me and banged on the door. Someone opened the door and let me use their phone to call 911. I remember the house immaculate outside, the cutest little house so nicely kept. When I walked back to use the phone the place was an absolute hole, there were clothes strewn all over and just a path from the living room to the kitchen. It was thilthy inside! So the police came with dogs and I made may trips to look at suspects in books at the police station but it had been very dark and I never was aboe to identify anyone. I was pretty scared after that, it took a long time to recover.
My lesson was to be very careful around dark, poorly lit areas and to use well used train stations after thant, not dinky little outposts!</p>
<p>I was mugged on the upper east side of manhattan in the 70’s…I was actually with a date but we were jumped by 5 guys…they hit the guy I was with and took my purse…I actually had the nerve to ask them not to take it. When we spoke to the cops I got a talking to…“Never, ever talk to them…give them what they want and you shouldn’t be walking around at 4am!”…I hope my kids are wiser than I was at the same age!</p>
<p>As we were returning to our parked car in Manhattan, we noticed that the trunk was open, and 2 guys were helping themselves to our stuff. My H yelled out and started racing towards them, along with my brother. I was tearing behind yelling, “they may be armed”. The 2 men started to run with as many things as they could, with H and B in close pursuit, and me, telling them to let them go. Plenty of people stopped to watch, but not to help. Finally my H caught up, threw one man to the ground and sat on him. The other man dumped our luggage and sprinted away. This guy begged of H to let him go, in Spanish, and when my H refused, the man chomped on his leg. H bellowed in pain, fell off the guy’s back, and the thief ran off. We got all our stuff. I was just furious with my H and brother for their foolhardy actions. But we were in our 20’s, impetuous, and also had practically all our worldly posessions in that car.
I tell our kids this story, and they are jaw-open-impressed, but I warn them that we could have been killed if thoses men were armed.</p>
<p>lesson carry a cell phone- don’t clean your car
this happened just about 6 years ago- when I was in school in the business district.I was driving a mini van that was parked in a lot a few blocks from the school. I opened up the side door to put in my backpack and surprised some kid who was going through my cds ( they actually were childrens computer games, I didn’t have a cd player 
) He looked up glanced at me, got into a much newer minivan that was alongside and drove away. I was furious, I had presence of mind to get the liscense number, apparently it was a common thing. Kids steal cars during the day, (mini vans are a popular item) move them around the city and come back and collect them at night.
The police did find the other van it had been abandoned and the steering column thrashed.
My caution about cleaning the car was that my van was normally full of stuff, kids jackets… artwork I was afraid to take into the house cause I didn’t have anywhere to put it… the outside was dusty… But I had just given the outside and in, a good scrubbing and it looked better than it had in weeks.( ok months)
But now that I have a newish car, I am afraid that I am being quite OCD about cleaning it, it has an alarm though for all that anyone pays attention to them! :eek:</p>
<p>Just before my D was born, my H decided to refinish the hardwood floors in the house…every room! He had the floors stripped and had applied the nasty smelling stuff that seals the grain. I really wasn’t supposed to be exposed, so we opened all of the windows that evening. It was winter…so I’m sure nobody expected us to have our windows open. </p>
<p>I was standing in the bedroom and noticed a man standing out on our lawn under the tree, looking up at me. I yelled out and asked him what he wanted and he said he was looking for someone - he named them, I forget the name. Then he just stood there. We live on a hill, so you don’t just wind up on our lawn easily. </p>
<p>I called my H, who came and told the guy to stay right there because he was coming down with the dog (we had a CRAZY chow-chow at the time). </p>
<p>By the time we got down and outside, the guy was gone. We walked around trying to figure out what hehad been doing…and I noticed that my car’s dome light was on. I opened the door and found a velvet cloth laid out with all kinds of tools neatly placed on it…the entire steering column had been taken apart and the steering wheel was disconnected. </p>
<p>The police came and told us that there was a very sophisticated car theft ring working the area…and that these guys were pros (I was driving a new Lexus at the time - so getting into it without setting off the alarm was quite an accomplishment - without a dent or sign of break-in). </p>
<p>It cost my insurance co $6700 to put the car back together. </p>
<p>4 months later I came down for breakfast, saw my car…went up to get dressed for work, came back down and the car was gone - broad daylight…no sign of how they did it. </p>
<p>Just goes to show…if a thief wants something, they’ll get it. </p>
<p>I now drive a Camry that has a few years on it…I don’t lock it…and nobody bothers it.</p>
<p>Many years ago, when first out of college, my roomie and I returned home from work and found our apartment ransacked. The pictures were on the floor, drawers upside down, etc. as they apparently were looking for cash. What fools! They ate our food, drank our beer and ultimately walked out with what little semi-valuable jewelry we had. The scarey thing was that they had been watching us for some time. About 3 months later, our apartment was broken into again, my bike stolen, the rear window smashed, etc., only this time, the thief left a note and apologized saying that if he had known we didn’t have anything, he wouldn’t have bothered!</p>
<p>only this time, the thief left a note and apologized saying that if he had known we didn’t have anything, he wouldn’t have bothered</p>
<p>How strange!</p>
<p>Held up at gunpoint 35 years ago. Good brush with fear.</p>
<p>Momsdream, and how ironic since burglar #1 beat him to the punch.</p>
<p>My purse was snatched in a very nice area near Park Avenue on the East Side of NYC years ago. I had just gotten off the subway and was walking really slowly because my right side hurt [which it still does, on and off, to this day, in fact, it hurts right now!] and the guy snatched my purse, then whirled me around to check and see if he could snatch any jewelry off me [I wore none, as usual] and ran off. I was moving out of the city that month so didn’t bother telling the library my card was stolen - I still kind of wonder if someone’s ran up a big overdue charge with that card whenever I see the Seinfeld rerun where he has an overdue book charge from twenty years before.<br>
My brother’s car was stolen three times while living in Cleveland years ago. [I think it was a Volvo.] The police kept finding it. The third time, it was trashed so badly the ins. co finally bought him a new one.</p>
<p>I had my ATM card stolen right in front of my eyes in Paris. The guy tried to pretend that it was still in the machine and wanted my PIN number to try to get it out. I accused him of having the card. He denied it and walked away, me following. I wouldn’t let him out of my sight and we walked into some neighboorhood where I began to get lost. He finally accosted me and told me that he’d kill me if I didn’t stop following him. I said I’d stop following him when he gave my card back to me. I even used my cell phone in front of him to report the card stolen so that it was no good to him.</p>
<p>He finally got exasperated and pulled out his wallet and said, “Look, I don’t have your card… only mine.” And I reached over and took HIS credit card and told him I’d exchange his for mine. He grabbed his back and started running, so I yelled loudly for the poilce and that stopped him cold.</p>
<p>The story goes on, but to cut to the end, I finally got my card back (unfortunately now cancelled). The funniest part of the story is that I had to ask the thief for directions back to the ATM machine so I could find my wife again.</p>
<p>When I lived in Cleveland Hts, we bordered on a questionable neighborhood (there were those who called our neighborhood questionable). H traveled a lot then, so I would pack up the kids who were just babies then and sometimes spend the day at some friend’s house that had more amenities than we did. The house was rather ramshackled and my housekeeping was pretty slipshod with 3 babies those days. When I returned after being gone all day, the back door was wide open. Well, with 3 babies, I was not about to walk in the back–anyone could be in there, so I drove out of the driveway to a neighbor’s and called the police. They came with dogs and searched the house to make sure no one was hiding in there. As I waited outside, it occurred to me that I had left the breakfast stuff out. Half folded laudry was on the dining room table, the living room was filled with toys–the place looked like some ransacked it, as it generally did. I was getting a bad feeling that the cop was going to come out and tell me that it looked like some had messed up the house, and I would have to tell him we lived that way. He must have seen worse, because that was not what happened but I still remember the feeling.</p>
<p>A few years later, my friend who lived over the Shaker Hts line, did get her house ransacked and some things stolen. She rushed into the house with her brood, yelled at them at the mess, which they denied doing–things were strewn worse than usual. It wasn’t for a couple of hours when she found the powder room window broken, that she realized what had happened. The thieves couldn’t steal any of the electronics cuz the wires were too tangled and the stuff was all junk anyways, but some jewelry was taken and the kids banks were taken, and the house ransacked. I was at her house years before when I had to call the police, and we howled at the story. Well, ten years or so later, when her house was broken in, she couldn’t tell the difference. She called me and we had a good laugh about that. </p>
<p>Shortly after that incident, we got our rottweiler/bullmastiff mix, and then our bloodhound look alike, and no one comes anywhere near our house even if the door is wide open. We cleared the street of suspected drugees when we moved in with the kids and dogs. One look at the hound, and that was it for those guys; they took their business elsewhere. These days, we have a ridiculous number of dogs, and, again no one is too comfortable about just walking in.</p>
<p>I used to live in a house with a balcony off of my parents’ room. They had the french doors that separated the balcony from the bedroom open one night, and a man climbed up. My mom was still awake, so he jumped off of the balcony onto my yard and ran away (we think that he broke a bone). :eek:</p>
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<p>My friend’s house was broken into by teenagers who stole some fake fancy jewelry and left diamonds. When the police came, the mom was checking to see what her room looked like, and a police officer came in. When she told him that some damage had been done, he told her that her D’s room had been messed up more. It hadn’t been touched!</p>
<p>lol Jamimom; I can recall a wreck or two in my home with all 4 kids at home, usually right before heading to church on a Sunday morning!</p>