Ever been Mugged?

In My Humble Opinion
1

One of my greatest fears in life is being mugged. Luckily, in my 41 years on earth, I have managed to avoid this. However, I think I have had a few close calls. Once, I was walking thru the Mission District at 3am on Christmas Eve. (It’s a long story, I don’t normally walk thru such parts of town). As I turned a seedy corner towards home, a guy who was standing against a building asked me it I had any money and I replied “no”, which was indeed true (and was the reason I was walking). I think if I hadn’t been walking very fast, he’d have mugged me (and gotten nothing).

I also had an incident a few months ago in which a homeless guy asked me for a dollar and I politely told him to move on. He proceeded to tell me that if I didn’t give him a dollar, he’d kill me. Apparently, there had been a number of complaints in the area and three police officers happened to be “trailing” him. They heard what he said and handcuffed him and took him away.

I try to take precautions when I go out on the weekends. For example, I only carry my ID and enough money to get me thru the night. If I am mugged, they won’t get much.

Has anyone here actually been mugged? What were the circumstances? What have you learned from the experience?

2

I haven’t, but I know people who have.

One guy I knew was held up at gunpoint. He said (truthfully) that he’d just spent his last dollar on a beer. The then told him “Then you’re going to die.” It turned out that there was no physical confrontation, and the kid left. My friend was scared shitless, though.

Another friend was at a gas station, I think, and his beeper went off. He came home bloodied, but I don’t remember any other details.

Both incidents were a pretty long time ago.

3

Yep. When I lived in Seattle, I worked nightshift at a McDonald’s for a while. It was less than 20 blocks from my apartment (we lived in Ballard – super low crime rate) and i always just walked, rather than taking a bus since it was faster. One night (well, technically morning since it was about 3am) a guy came up behind me, put a gun to my head and told me to give him my money. Of course I had no money (did I mention I worked at a McDonald’s???) and I couldn’t help myself, I just started laughing at the poor sot. I told him, “now, do you really want to kill me for nothing?” I guess the laughter unnerved him, because he took off running, and I was left with my money (which was a grand whopping total of $3) and a funny story of my own idiocy :smiley:

4

I was mugged at gunpoint. By a 12-year-old kid. I was walking to my parked car after a night class at grad school when a kid asked me what time it was. I looked at my watch and told him and kept moving. I got into my car, picked up my cell phone and called my boyfriend and this kid knocked on my window while I was talking. I told my boyfriend to hold on and the kid asked for $.35 to use the pay phone. My intuition was telling me to get out as fast as I could - even run the kid over if necessary, but I didn’t want to be a bitch, so I gave him some change, he put a gun to my head and demanded my purse. I handed it over, he ran around to the passenger side and started to get in. But a college security car drove by (didn’t stop, though), he got nervous, got out and told me to drive off.

I picked up my cell phone from the floor as I left and got back on the phone with my boyfriend - I had dropped the phone when the gun was held to my head - and told him what happened, drove to his apartment and we called the cops. Turns out the kid took all my cash - all of $4 - some Peruvian change and left everything else strewn in a trail in the direction he was going. Never found the kid, but the police suspected that there was a 9-year-old helping him as a lookout. There had been similar muggings earlier that week, and others had reported seeing the 12-year old and a young kid with him.

5

Came close. Atlanta, coming back from a show around 2 in the morning, walking in decent areas surrounded by some pretty tough neighborhoods. A man, 20 year old, muscular, had one hand hidden inside his shirt as he emerged from some shadows. He wanted to know if we had the time. My stupid friends went to their pockets, starting to pull out their phones or whatever, when I rattled off some number and got the fuck out of there. He never once looked into our eyes, he just wanted to case us.

6

I was held up at gunpoint once upon a time.

It was around 9:00 pm. I parked on a dark side street near the “strip,” where I was about to go shoot some pool and drink a few. I had $30 in my wallet (I carry a man’s wallet sometimes - purses are a pain) and three loose singles in my other back pocket. A white car pulled up, and asked me directions. I walked closer to the car. The passenger “showed” me his gun (meaning he didn’t point it at me,) and told me to give him my money. I, being the cocky indestructible feisty girl, got pissed off!

I stood there, saying “Aw, man, you don’t want to do this!” I had my thumbs hooked into my back pockets, hemming and hawing. I wasn’t brave enough to just walk away, though. He threatened to shoot me in the leg! Weird, huh? So I suddenly realized I had the $3. “You want my money? Here!” I plucked it out and threw it at him, and walked away (the opposite direction from the way his car was pointing, and towards the busy street.)

I was pretty proud of myself, actually! I still had drinkin’ money, after all.

Now I think I was just a dumbass kid… :smiley:

7

I grew up in NYC in the 80s, in a house with burnt out abandoned buildings (um… crackhouses) on the block. In high school, I commuted daily by subway to Union Square, incidentally where Bernie Goetz got into that spot of trouble.

I am 5’2" and a woman. I possess no nunchuck skills or bostaff skills.

I have never been mugged, or had anything resembling a near miss.

8

1996, guy with a syringe. It was really upsetting at the time and that night but afterwards I was less afraid to walk the streets then I had been hitherto. I just realised that losing a few quid wasn’t a big deal. There seems to have been a rash of muggings in Dublin around that time. It seems much less common nowadays.

9

Yes during a night that turned out to be one of the worst i’ve had. In New Orleans, my friend and I really liked this performer called White Bitch. He did this one man band sort of thing. Anyways, I had my criminology final the next day and so I studied way ahead (it was a multiple choice exam so its not like it was that big of a deal) so I could go to this show. Upon getting to this bar we’d never been and realizing its cash only, we leave to go find an atm in a park of town we were not familiar with.

We get turned around on the way back and end up in Desire projects. This is when some guy approaches us and asks us for the time. This gets us to stop walking and then he puts a gun at us I tell him I didnt have any money but he followed us from the ATM so he called me out on a lie. He was pretty strung out so I never really felt that threatened.

Up ahead we hear sirens and he runs off with the cash we gave him. walking a bit further we see two cop cars blocking off the street and some commotion going on between them. We get up there and three cops have a tweaker on the ground, hands cuffed behind his back and they are taking turns kicking him in his face and stomach. They had just searched him bc his drug arsenal was spread out across the hood of one of the cars

They see us and immediately stop being the shit out of this man who is sobbing on the ground bleeding. They tell us we didn’t see nothin and to scram. We say we’ve been mugged. No reaction. They eventually tell us they will drive us back to the bar where my car is. So we get tossed in the back with bleeding tweaker guy and show up in time for all of our friends to see us get let out of the back of a cop car. I’m somewhat beligerent at this point and put a cigarette out on the partition between the front and back of the cop car.

This earns me a very public field sobriety test which I passed and we were just sent on our way. White Bitch is over so my friend and I decide to head back. Friend thinks I’m stress though and says that she will drive my car. On the ride she convinces me to have one wind down drink at a bar on the way home. I finally say okay. We wander back into this room they call “the heroin den” where a sweaty guy on ecstacy puts a cigarette out on my thigh (still have the scar to prove it)

Oh I forgot to mention the my friend drives like a blindfolded monkey and took the side mirror off a parallel parked car on the way to this bar.

We leave the bar because, well, my tights were seared into my flesh by this idiot, and somehow my friend convinces me to let her drive AGAIN. She completely curbs the tire, I call everyone I realize that I took the jack out of my trunk and did something with it so I call everyone I know to come help. My ex boyfriend is a block away and says “youre a rich bitch, call AAA” which is what I had to do

Its 4 am when AAA shows up. I sleep for like five minutes and go to my exam at 9 am. I made an A on the exam and only lost 60 dollars cash but the part of me that died that night will never return.

10

Wow, lobstermonster. That sounds like quite a night. I can’t imagine how traumatizing it must have been for you.

I don’t know if it counts as a mugging, but one night, as I was walking home from doing a bit of grocery shopping, I called my best friend to see what she was up to. Turned out she was walking home as well and was only a block away from where I was. We met on a street corner (one block away from where I live) and she was a bit tipsy, so we sat down on the grass and started chatting about nothing. It was maybe around 9pm.

As we were talking our heads off I noticed a group of guys walk past us, giving us funny looks. I assumed it was because we were sitting in the middle of a random sidewalk in front of a random house surround by bags of groceries. But after a few minutes I noticed them approaching us again. My friend, while nowhere near wasted, was drunk enough not to notice anything wrong when they ended up forming a circle around us. In a heartbeat, I thought, “Oh, shit, we are dead.” Then almost at the same instant, one of them snatched my bag - yanked it off my shoulder so hard the strap snapped - and all of them sprinted off.

Before I was even aware of what I was doing I was running after them, yelling my head off, while my friend was still on the ground, not even sure as to what had just happened. It took me a minute to come to my senses and realize that running after them was probably not the best thing to be doing at this point. I found an emergency phone booth (they had them all over campus) and called the police, but of course the bastards were long gone at this point.

The thing that pissed me off the most was that there wasn’t anything in the bag that would have been of value to them. Maybe $20 in cash? But I had my passport and I-24 card in there, as well as my iPod and my favorite pair of sunglasses AND my favorite sweater. Plus the bag itself; I’d bought it in Seoul. I was pissed and pretty terrified - I felt so violated, even though we’d been pretty lucky, all things considered. I still tend to clutch my bag tighter when I feel like someone’s approaching me.

11

Couple of times. Once when I was about 12 I jumped on a freight train with a friend and his older brother. A few miles down the tracks a couple of hobos climbed in the empty freight car we were in. The younger guy went to the back end of the car and curled up in a corner. The other guy pulled a knife and wanted our money. Between us we had 50 cents. He took that and told us to go to the forward end of the car and keep quiet. A while later the train was moving at a pretty good clip and the older hobo was squatted next to an open door. My friends older brother snuck up behind him and pushed him out of the car. That area had a lot of blackberry vines next to the track, I am sure he went bouncing through them. We ended up 90 miles from home, my friend’s father came and picked us up. He was not happy.

The other time was when I was in the Navy, I was going to school at Great Lakes Naval Training center north of Chicago. A couple of buddies and I went to Chicago one Saturday, our goal was to get inside the Playboy club. We went to the Sears Tower and a few other places. We were on a bus going no place in particular when a young black kid, maybe 14 years old, came and asked us if we wanted to buy a watch. He had a dozen or so inside his jacket. We told him to get lost when he pulled a knife and wanted our watches and wallets. One of the guys I was with reached in his boot (he was from Texas) and pulled out a knife that was twice as long as the one the kid had. The kid headed for the back of the bus and got off at the next stop. We got out of that part of Chicago as fast as we could. We also didn’t get into the Playboy Club, you had to be a member and it was $35, that was a lot of money for us at that time.

12

I lived in NYC for 25 years, and was never mugged. There were times when I worked nights, and had to walk home at 3 a.m., through not the best neighborhoods. I just ignored everyone and walked fast. No problem.

13

I’ve never been mugged, and I’m not really worried about it (as An Gadaí said, losing a few quid isn’t that big of a deal, and I rarely carry much cash anyway). Then again, I’m young yet, and a naive Canadian. I figure that if someone pulls a gun on me I can just hand over my cash and get on with my day (or cancel my credit cards and debit card if the mugger insists on taking my entire wallet); maybe tell the police if only for the sake of accurate crime rate statistics.

The roughest neighborhood I’ve walked through at night is Vancouver’s downtown east side (and I don’t know how it compares to rough neighborhoods in the States), and it doesn’t intimidate me. Of course, I’m a hefty fella, bulging with what could be muscle. I figure that I can just stride confidently through scuzzy neighborhoods, and would-be muggers will overlook me in favor of prey that smells like fear.

14

I’ve been mugged, happened two and a bit years ago. I was on the train coming home at about 10 at night and there were two guys on the train giving me what seemed to be strange looks. Whenever I looked up they were looking at me or whispering to each other in a way that was fairly obvious. I was on my mobile phone on most of the journey and kept on talking hoping I was just being paranoid. I got off at my stop and went on quickly ahead of the crowd and down the stairs into the tunnel that links the two sides of the station. As I’m walking through the tunnel I’m suddenly grabbed from behind in a headlock and this guy says in my ear “let go of the phone” which I did as there wasn’t much I could do at this point. Fortunately I was wearing a bulky backpack so the guy wasn’t able to put me in a very good headlock and I managed to push him off and turn around and both of them were standing there. The one that had grabbed me said “give me your wallet” and I told him to fuck off (do you know how long it takes to cancel and re-order credit cards? And I had about five on me - I don’t think so) and we started fighting. I was so angry at this point that I gave as good as I got and by this time the other passengers on the train were walking into the tunnel - a few just walked past so I shouted out “can someone help me, I’m being mugged here!” which got people’s attention. The two wankers ran off and a small posse of blokes asked me if I wanted them to chase them but I just said not to bother and walked home feeling angry and scared. However I called the police and, thanks ot the wonders of CCTV and modern policing, they were found and arrested. My phone was insured and my contact list backed up on my computer so in all I was only set back £10.

There was a happy ending though: goon number 1 who grabbed me was sentenced to five years in prison (and I didn’t even need to turn up to testify) and good number 2 was sentenced to 3 years. Sure they’ll just come out with more contacts and a drug habit but still, I felt justice was done. Also goon number 2 was quite yougn and not bad looking so hopefully he’s being regularly molested by fellow inmates. I try not to let the event affect me but now I always make sure I’m walking with a crowd when I go through that tunnel.

15

Athens, Georgia, sometime around September 1993. I’m going to meet a friend at a downtown bar at around 11 p.m. on a Monday night. I’m walking down the sidewalk and there are no other pedestrians in sight–it’s Monday and things are slow.

Then I see Guy 1 walking toward me on the sidewalk. I also vaguely notice Guy 2 walking toward me, about the same distance away, but he’s crossing from the other side of the street, angling toward me. In retrospect, I now realize that this was in case I tried to cross the street to avoid Guy 1.

I still don’t think anything’s up, because I’m 21 and invincible. As Guy 1 nears me, I nod my head and politely say, “Howdy.” (This is the South, after all.)

In response, he hauls off and socks me in the face as hard he can.

I go right down. I’m lying on the sidewalk, holding my face and wondering if anything’s broken in there. (It’s not.) I roll over onto my side and see that Guy 2 is standing right by my head, maybe two feet away. I’m suddenly afraid I’m going to get kicked in the face, and I’m protecting my face with my hands.

“What the fuck do you want?” I shout.

“Where’s your money?” Guy 1 says.

I ponder the situation for about .0003 seconds, then roll over onto my belly. “It’s in my right back pocket,” I tell him, “take it.”

So he takes it and they walk off. I go to a pay phone and call the cops, and like five cop cars show up, but they never catch the guys. The robbers did take all my ID, library cards, etc. out of my wallet and leave them on a curb somewhere, though. Someone found them the next day and called the police and I got all that stuff back.

Total loss: $27 and my sense of security. It was a couple of years before I could walk down a city street alone again without heart palpitations. I’m fine now, but I’m definitely more aware of my surroundings.

16

I almost/kinda got mugged in Amsterdam in 1999. I was lost trying to find my way back to my hotel and this guy accosted me very aggressively and said give me some money. I said no, he said he just got out of jail and wanted some money. I realized there was no one around. He was cussing and puffing up and kept saying give me some money. Finally, I said, “I’m not giving you any money, now what?”

He stormed off. I still don’t know WTF that was, much more aggressive than panhandling, but not quite a mugging.

17

I neglected to mention in my earlier post what a positively atrocious day the day of my mugging was. I not only got mugged, my boyfriend dumped me and I broke my finger in my trunk on the same day.

Fast forward about a year and I got mugged almost a year to the day and broke my finger again, this time in the door of my car. Thankfully, that experience has yet to repeated.

18

I was almost mugged in Rome. I was on the stairs on Capitoline Hill, and three of the “gypsies” attacked me (I know they aren’t really Gypsies, but that’s how they were always referred to…). It was an old lady and 2 smaller people who looked like kids. The lady and the girl grabbed my arm and trapped me against the wall, while the boy tried to get my wallet. I twisted my ankle in the scuffle, and that boy was trying hard to get my credit cards (the wallet hung around my neck).

So I punched them in the face. As hard as I could. I felt bad afterwards, because I punched an old lady and a couple of kids, but fuck, it wasn’t the time to be nice about things. I hobbled back to my hotel and double-checked my wallet. They didn’t get anything.

19

I was punched in the head and shoved into a parked car by 5 teenagers. They took my wallet and stomped on my glasses – maybe the most Woody Allenesque moment of my life thus far. This was in San Francisco, Mission District, 1990 or so, around 2 AM.

Ten seconds before the punch a bus drove by with this above the windshield. For years I figured I’d imagined it.

20

I had an aggressive panhandler try to strongarm me in downtown DC a few years ago. He backed off when I pulled a knife on him.