What If?

(A journal entry from April 2008)

Five nights a week I ride the #22 Clark Street bus home from work. Depending on how busy it is I catch the bus somewhere between midnight and 2:30 am. My route is pretty much the same; I walk up Rush Street, turn left on Bellevue, cross State Street and walk about a block-and-a-half to the bus stop at Clark and Maple. Sometimes, if I've got the munchies, I stop at White Hen and get something chocolate.

If I miss the bus, or if it's particularly cold, I'll walk to the Red Line station about three blocks north of Maple and catch the train. I prefer the bus because at that time of night it's actually quicker than the train and leaves me considerably closer to my front door.

Most of the time I sit under the closet-sized shelter and read or do a crossword puzzle. Some nights I bundle up against the cold, some nights I just watch it rain.  Rarely I'll chat on the phone or with someone at the stop (there's usually no one else there).

Tonight I saw a woman get robbed. More precisely, I heard a woman screaming bloody murder while getting robbed.

I was sitting at the bench on Maple and Clark when I suddenly became aware that a woman was screaming. At first I thought it was one of the drunks stumbling home from a night on Division Street.

I looked up and I heard it again, and I realized it wasn't someone who was drunk but someone who was scared. I looked right, saw nothing. I looked left, and about a half-block away I saw a woman standing in the middle of the sidewalk, moving toward me and a guy running between two parked cars into an idling sedan waiting in the middle of the street.

I grabbed my cell phone, stood up, then started walking toward her. She picked up her pace and the car accelerated in my direction. There was no front plate on the car, and all I could see of the driver or passenger was an outline. I tried to catch the back plate, but if there was one person in the area just then with worse eyesight than me I challenge them to step forward.

My lousy vision, the steady drizzle, the speed of the car, my exhaustion (after working 9 hours in a smoky bar) and the fact that I haven't changed my disposable contact in a week-and-a-half (it's starting to feel like a piece of aluminum foil in my eye) conspired to keep me from seeing the back plate. I think there may have been an 8 in it. Or maybe it was a zero. It's hard to tell.

The woman trotted up to me, and I have to say, quite calmly, asked me to call 911. Which I did. She told the dispatch where she was and what had happened. There were wide, red scratches on her neck, and she was obviously experiencing a massive adrenaline rush (though she kept herself incredibly composed).

She was worrying aloud about her lost ID (her passport, she said) and the fact that the person who had just robbed her at gunpoint now knew where she lived. She was thrilled he didn't take her iPod. She said, "He had a gun, and I was screaming." She looked at me wide-eyed with the realization that she could have been shot. "I'm really lucky," she said...and I knew she meant she was lucky she hadn't been shot (or worse), but it was almost absurd to hear someone who had just been assaulted and robbed say they were lucky.

My first thought was that the gun probably wasn't loaded. Armed robbery carries a much stiffer penalty than plain-old snatch-and-run robbery (I think it does). Murder, or attempted murder carries a much stiffer sentence (and I'm damn sure about that one). One way to make sure no one gets shot is to not have a gun at all (kind of like burglary abstinence).

Of course, not having the threat of a gun might make committing the act a little more difficult. After all, if someone walked up to you and said "Give me your money," while simply standing there, it might make a potential victim less likely to comply. But if someone has the business end of a .45 in their cheek, they might be more inclined to hand over their purse (or what have you).

I've been robbed. Burgled, actually. Fortunately, no one has ever stuck a weapon in my face. But my place was broken into once and for the following week I barely slept. It's a sickening feeling, really.

My second thought was, 'Wow, she is lucky.'

My third thought, and the one I couldn't shake until I was halfway home, was what if he had shot her, and what if he'd seen me as he was driving past, wandering into the street to try and see his licence plate...