I was heading home from my girlfriend's house at around 11:45 PM. The trip was as boring as usual and I was talking to my roommate on the phone at the time. I got out of my car while on the phone (via headset) and headed to my apartment. Fifteen feet from my front door (a single flight of stairs, actually), I heard a rustle from the bush to my left followed quickly by some urgent demand. I turned to look and the first thing I noticed was a black automatic handgun.
Attached to that handgun was a hand which lead to an arm that I followed to a man dressed in dark clothing wearing a blue bandanna over his face. In what I assume was nothing more than a repetition of his early noise, he asked me for my money and helpfully added that he would shoot me if I refused.
I had always wondered what my reaction to this exact sort of scenario might be and I'd say I surprised even myself. I was not scared so much as I was surprised. Why would someone mug me, especially when I, at the moment (upon later inspection of my belongs) hand 35 cents on my person? I handed him my wallet and he asked if that was all of my money. Given that I knew the wallet to be empty and believing that I didn't actually have any cash on my person, I answered the question as it was asked and simply replied yes He then asked me to turn and walk toward the parking lot.
My friend was on the phone with me the entire time and I ignored his requests for more details as he had heard the demand both from his window and through the phone. After waiting around in the parking lot for a few seconds, I turned back around and went inside to call the police.
Just after giving my statement to the police, the friendly officer and one of his somewhat dickish peers sped off from the parking lot at what I would call an unsafe speed. While I was on hold with my bank hoping to cancel all of my cards (or at least tell them what happened so there would be a record), there was another heavy knock on the door. The police had returned and had caught the guy. It turns out I was the second person he mugged and he tried it a third time in a 30 minute span in the same square mile area.
So, I went and identified the gentleman and spent the better part of an evening being bored out of my mind in a police station. My property was recovered though the police alternately denied all knowledge of the existence of said property or to the exact location but eventually it was returned. Unfortunately, they kept my wallet and only returned the contents.
In his crime spree, the gentleman robbed a high-school junior who was penniless, me (who generally caries no cash at all) and a middle aged woman. In total his crime spree netted 18 USD in cash. My wallet was worth far more than that.
What made it strange was that he did not demand my pricy watch, nor my phone that I was actively talking on, nor may backpack containing hundreds of dollars in books, a laptop easily worth a few hundred dollars even if sold quickly and the bag itself. My backpack alone was worth more than his take. Hell, the pens in my backpack were worth more than his take.
It only seemed weird in retrospect. In our brief encounter (lasting at best half a minute) I had a bigger impact on his life than anyone but my parents have had on me. The guy is in prison serving a lengthy sentence. When the police asked I simply said that if you ignored the gun and the required threat of death that comes with making any demand while holding a weapon he was perfectly polite. While I'm sure everyone has a mental image of a mugger, this gentleman hardly met mine. He was just a normal looking early 20 something. He looked like any number of people I might have attended college with. He was wearing a nice turtle neck and had a gun that would have taken him months to pay off if he continued being terrible at mugging people. In short, I was mugged by a guy who's total mugging experience was probably 1 person long at that point and that experience had been earned only minutes before in my apartment complex.
Attached to that handgun was a hand which lead to an arm that I followed to a man dressed in dark clothing wearing a blue bandanna over his face. In what I assume was nothing more than a repetition of his early noise, he asked me for my money and helpfully added that he would shoot me if I refused.
I had always wondered what my reaction to this exact sort of scenario might be and I'd say I surprised even myself. I was not scared so much as I was surprised. Why would someone mug me, especially when I, at the moment (upon later inspection of my belongs) hand 35 cents on my person? I handed him my wallet and he asked if that was all of my money. Given that I knew the wallet to be empty and believing that I didn't actually have any cash on my person, I answered the question as it was asked and simply replied yes He then asked me to turn and walk toward the parking lot.
My friend was on the phone with me the entire time and I ignored his requests for more details as he had heard the demand both from his window and through the phone. After waiting around in the parking lot for a few seconds, I turned back around and went inside to call the police.
Just after giving my statement to the police, the friendly officer and one of his somewhat dickish peers sped off from the parking lot at what I would call an unsafe speed. While I was on hold with my bank hoping to cancel all of my cards (or at least tell them what happened so there would be a record), there was another heavy knock on the door. The police had returned and had caught the guy. It turns out I was the second person he mugged and he tried it a third time in a 30 minute span in the same square mile area.
So, I went and identified the gentleman and spent the better part of an evening being bored out of my mind in a police station. My property was recovered though the police alternately denied all knowledge of the existence of said property or to the exact location but eventually it was returned. Unfortunately, they kept my wallet and only returned the contents.
In his crime spree, the gentleman robbed a high-school junior who was penniless, me (who generally caries no cash at all) and a middle aged woman. In total his crime spree netted 18 USD in cash. My wallet was worth far more than that.
What made it strange was that he did not demand my pricy watch, nor my phone that I was actively talking on, nor may backpack containing hundreds of dollars in books, a laptop easily worth a few hundred dollars even if sold quickly and the bag itself. My backpack alone was worth more than his take. Hell, the pens in my backpack were worth more than his take.
It only seemed weird in retrospect. In our brief encounter (lasting at best half a minute) I had a bigger impact on his life than anyone but my parents have had on me. The guy is in prison serving a lengthy sentence. When the police asked I simply said that if you ignored the gun and the required threat of death that comes with making any demand while holding a weapon he was perfectly polite. While I'm sure everyone has a mental image of a mugger, this gentleman hardly met mine. He was just a normal looking early 20 something. He looked like any number of people I might have attended college with. He was wearing a nice turtle neck and had a gun that would have taken him months to pay off if he continued being terrible at mugging people. In short, I was mugged by a guy who's total mugging experience was probably 1 person long at that point and that experience had been earned only minutes before in my apartment complex.
