CAJUN LADY wrote:Now, Hiker Chick, we (or me anyway) want to hear about what happened with your bad experiences.
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I was walking home from work at 7:00p on a Friday evening in November. Well lit street, heavily trafficked with cars and pedestrians. I was carrying a purse and an unopened package -- birthday gift my sister had mailed to my office.
Per a Refuse to be a Victim instruction, I'd long been in the habit by this point of walking with my purse adjacent to the fence-side of the sidewalk (a community of row houses, typical of the city's older neighborhoods).
Carrying your purse next to a wall or fence makes it a little harder for purse snatchers.
I passed two groups of pedestrians going the opposite direction.
Was three blocks from home, turned left at the next corner, onto a quieter, shorter street. I'm on the left side of the street.
About 40 feet down the street I hear running footsteps coming up fast behind me. I turn to my left to look behind and to my horror a man, approximately 6-feet tall, wearing a ski mask and with his jacket hood up is bearing down on me, fast.
I think, or say - not sure:
"Oh my God..."
If you've ever been in a car that's sliding out of control about to crash off the road, then that would approximate the "Oh my God" that was going through my mind.
I brace myself, pulling my purse up to my chest and hunch over the fence in front of a rowhouse. Unbeknownst to me until later, the birthday box flew into the yard.
He tackles me. I stay on my feet (years of co-ed football may have helped). He's behind me, grabbing me, I can't get away. We're two homes away from a dark alley.
Per Refuse to be a Victim, I'm not screaming. Instead I'm concentrating solely on yelling as loud as I could -- looking up at the upper windows of the homes I'm in front of.
"Fire!" "Fire!" "Fire!" gets people's attention, especially in high-density housing.
Quicker than it seemed at the time, the guy who had been suspicious on the previous block that I was being stalked by the perp comes running around the corner (he tells me later that the perp had been walking in the street on the other side of the parked cars -- a few cars behind me).
And some other guys come running out of the rowhouses.
The perp took off running down the street.
My cell phone was in my pocket, next to pepper spray. I called 911 and Metro police and another police force (there are many here) were on scene pronto. But too late, the perp was gone.
I was seemingly fine. That night my back was sore from being tackled. The next day I was at a restaurant and started having a flashback.
Fortunately, I was scheduled in the next week to leave the country for a month. New Zealand. A nicer antidote to DC could not be imagined.
But some guy came running up behind me in Christchurch and about gave me a heart attack.
So joggers announce yourself if you're approaching a woman. Some of us aren't going to assume you're a jogger.
P.S. I opened the birthday gift box from my sister later that night. Among the contents:
The Bible.
