It was the Sunday before Christmas 2009 and we needed potatoes. There was a fabulous roast in the oven and we had a hankering for mashed potatoes. We should've driven to Farmer Joe's, our local grocer, for some yukon golds or reds, but we got lazy. Hubby said "I'll just walk around to the corner store and grab some russets." Big Mistake.
Walking out the corner store my husband was followed by three guys. They were young and not even all that sketchy looking. But about half way down the block they surrounded my husband - one of the guys got in front, two stayed behind. The guy in front was holding something in his right pocket. A brief exchange went down kind of like this:
Guy: Hey man what you got in your wallet?
Husband: You don't want to do this. Seriously, it's not worth your time.
Guy: What you got in that wallet man?
Husband: Really, this isn't worth it. You don't want to do this.
Guy: What you got in your wallet?
Husband: *thinks* I can take out his skinny punk ass and break his face right here right now. But his buddies are behind me and they'll probably stab me or shoot me. What's he holding in his pocket? Maybe it's a gun. Maybe not. I'm not giving him anything until I see the gun.
Husband: Well what you got in your pocket?
Guy: What you got in your wallet?
Husband: What you got in your pocket?
*and so on and so forth*
Finally the guy pulls out a silver revolver. He was so nervous his hand trembled as he held the gun. This made him super scary and super dangerous. A scared robber is much more likely to shoot by accident than a confident robber. No one wants a hole in their stomach just because your robber was spooked by a car that backfired down the block. At this point my husband realized the game was up. He pulls out all the cash he had in his wallet, a whooping $40, and tosses it at the guy. The guy and his two buddies take off running down the street.
Key takeaways from this story:
1. It's time to leave Oakland.
2. Be smart if you're mugged. Give them just your cash and not your whole wallet. Imagine the hassle of having cancel all your credit cards, get a new drivers license, etc.
3. You can't talk them out of it. Just hand it over.
I had a friend who was beated about the skull and had skull fractures. he still lives a few houses down from counciluselesswoman jane brunner.
ReplyDeletethe assailants jumped him in the dark on 63rd or colby and used $40 on his atm card at JACK IN THE BOX.
if he had let me know, i woul dhave been on JBox's ass about video tapes. since something similar happened to me i went to retrieve video too, but alas the establishment only recorded 10 days' worth of video at a time, so all is lost.
but i have found some new eyewitnesses who are friendly...
another thing is, i'm 99% probably going to be packing heat for my remaining day in this 'town'
ReplyDeleteFunny you mention the video tapes. We went back to the corner store and asked the owner if he had the tapes, since the guys that robbed my husband were in the store with him, but of course there was no tape in the camera.
ReplyDeleteI still remember my mugging (on my birthday!) a few years ago. 3 punks like these thugs just ran off the sidewalk and shoved me off my (ancient) bicycle. Ripped off my backpack, I landed a punch on one, the other grabbed my bicycle, and I tried to get him. Of course they all got away since the guy on my bike was too fast for me on feet.
ReplyDeleteThey got my dirty gym clothes in my backpack. Still not sure why I bothered to chase the one, since, literally, that was all they got (plus my ancient bike).
Oh, I left Oakland too after that. Too tired of the drug dealing punks, these teenage thugs, ineffective cops, and buffoons in the government.
ReplyDeleteSan Leandro is my new home. Property taxes are much lower (like Alameda), cops come when you call them even for "little stuff" like a car window getting broken, that an OPD would never come by for, etc etc.
What a drag to be mugged on your birthday! So sorry... glad to hear you made it through OK and that you found a nicer, more pleasant place to live.
ReplyDelete