Sunday, August 1, 2010

IT WAS A SUNNY DAY

It seemed like a perfect sunny Sunday until the mugging.

A few hours ago I was answering e-mail when I heard pounding on the door. It was a very distraught friend. She had just been mugged a block away.

At half-past noon a thug had snuck up on her as she was walking past Plymouth Church. The mugger knocked her down, snarled, "Give it to me!" and ripped her I-Phone from her hands.

I called the cops as my wife, Francesca, consoled her. We learned that her phone contained a GPS signal and a minute later, we could see where it was on map. I jumped in my car and raced to the corner of Frow and Douglas uncertain what to do next. Was it this man or that? Both were riding black bicycles.

"This might be one for professionals", I decided. By the time I located a cop my "suspects" were gone. The officer told me she was aware of the crime and I was, in fact, hindering her efforts to solve it.
Oh well.
I decided to handle the small stuff instead. A few minutes before I had seen a man standing suspiciously at the back of a blue building. I thought he might have stashed my neighbor's cell phone there.
All I found was a fresh puddle of urine.
Another officer explained that minutes earlier the thief had turned the stolen phone off stopping the GPS signal. With four cops cars surrounding us it was certain the bad guy was gone.
I gave up crime fighting and went home.
By now our friend was feeling better. We were thankful she had not been hurt but then, pain sometimes doesn't show. She looked crestfallen as she left saying, "I don't know if I'll ever feel safe here again".

1 comment:

  1. A physical description of the criminal beyond 'young man', 'guy', or 'thug' might be helpful, don't you think? Or are your female friends with iPhones supposed to be wary of the entire young male population of Miami? She's lucky she wasn't seriously hurt or killed.

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