Speaker 1: I worked as a regular pizza delivery driver during my
later years of high school. Because of school, I had
always worked the night shifts on Friday and Saturday. It
was a pretty laid back job, and for the most
part i'd just be driving or standing in the shop
taking orders on the phone. A couple of my friends
worked there too, so I always had someone to talk to. Anyways,
it was Friday night and i'd just gotten back from
my last break. The place closes at one am, so
we usually stop accepting orders around twelve, as we still
have the clean and everything before we leave. It was
eleven thirty, but I figured i'd get a head start
on the cleaning just to pass the time. Me and
my other two friends were the only ones working that night,
and one was finishing up a delivery and the other
just went on break. After I got back, minutes into cleaning,
the phone started ringing, so I picked it up and
asked how I could help them. There was an older
man on the line and he asked if we were
still open for deliveries. I told him yeah, but we
aren't taking any large orders. They said that was okay
and asked for a regular pizza and gave me the
address to deliver it to. About fifteen minutes later, the
pizza was ready and I boxed it up and got
my car. The address was a little more than ten
minutes away, and I was probably halfway there when I
pulled up behind another car stopped at a stop sign
on an empty road. I waited for a few seconds,
looking around to see why he was stopped for so long.
Then I honked my horn gently, assuming that he'd just
fallen asleep or something. The car still didn't move, so
I started to pull around him, but of course, just
as I did that, he pressed on the gas and
jolted forward down the road. I was a little bit annoyed,
but I figured it was just some guy being a
dick for fun, so I continued down the road. But
a couple minutes later I passed that same car pulled
over on the side of the road with its headlights off.
I got a really uncomfortable feeling passing them, like something
didn't feel right about it. I checked my mirrors for
the rest of the way to the house to make
sure he wasn't trying to follow me. Finally, I turned
down the addresses long driveway that went between a forest
of trees. I pulled up to the front of the
house and put the car and park. Then I made
sure I had everything and went up and knocked on
the door. I waited a minute or two, and then
an old lady answered and asked me what I was doing.
I told her I was delivering a pizza here and
recited the address to her that I was given. She
said that nobody here ordered a pizza, and I could
tell she felt bad for me. I just thanked her
and went back to my car. This wasn't the most
uncommon thing that happened, as some people would do it
as a prank or just give the wrong address on accident.
I figured i'd get out of the ladies driveway then
call my friend to have them call the number back
and confirm the address. So I started making my way
out of the driveway, but as I was making my
way down, bright headlights blinded my view from ahead of me.
It was so bright I knew it had to be
a car coming towards me, so I quickly pressed on
the brakes. I waited for the car to turn off
the lights or turn their car around, but after waiting
for a little bit, I figured they weren't going to move.
I wasn't sure exactly what to do, as I could
barely see, and I knew the driveway was thinned, so
there was no way I could get around them. I
decided to just wait and see what they do first,
as I didn't really have any other options. A whole
minute went by of both of us just sitting there
before they turned their lights completely off. I waited for
my eyes to readjust to the darkness, then looked ahead
to see where their car was, but I couldn't see it.
I put the car back in drive and slowly began
making my way down, being cautious in case the other
car started coming down the driveway again. A few seconds later,
I see the car with all its headlights off parked
in the middle of the path. I recognized it as
the same one that was parked at the stop sign.
I guess he had followed me without me noticing. I
couldn't see through the windows in the dark, so as
I sat there, I started to get pretty anxious and
worried that there could be multiple people in there with
bad intentions. Then the front driver door opened and a
man got out and began making his way towards me.
Halfway to my car, he stopped and began waving at
me as if he wanted me to pull up next
to him. At this point, I'd be lying if I
didn't say that I was really starting to freak out.
I tried my best to pretend to be calm, though,
and rolled the car next to him. To my surprise,
when I pulled up, he didn't say anything to me.
He didn't even look at me as he started walking
around my car and eventually stopped right behind me by
the trunk of my car. I looked in my rear
view mirror, trying to figure out what he was doing
and why he was just standing there. A few moments
go by as I'm looking at this man, when I
suddenly come to a realization and turned my head around
to the front. The other three doors of the car
swing open and three more men start sprinting towards my car.
My adrenaline started pumping, and I stomped on the gas,
flooring it and almost hitting one of the men. As
I turned my car off the driveway, I swerve around
their car, nearly hitting several trees before makeoking it back
onto the path and eventually out onto the main road.
There was nobody else on the road at this time,
so I could clearly see in my mirror when the
car pulled out onto the road and started making its
way towards me. I figured they weren't going to stop
unless I could get somewhere that wasn't so isolated. But
after thirty seconds, the men turned down a side road.
I made it back to work and immediately told my
friends what happened. They both convinced me to call the
police to at least report it, even though I wasn't
able to give much helpful information. An officer came down
and I gave an official statement on the incident, and
then they left just before we closed. I was surprised
to get a call the next day saying that three
of the men had been arrested after attempting to rob
another car later that night in the same exact driveway
that I was in. The men were caught when the
lady called the police after having two more people trying
to deliver food to her that she didn't order. I
guess they were using that driveway to lord delivery drivers
in and rob them on the way out. Since it
was a narrow, isolated driveway surrounded by forest. Unfortunately, though,
the fourth man was able to run through the trees
and make it out, and I never received any updates
on him in the following days, so I'm not sure
if he was ever found. The old lady said, though,
that she was unaware and had never seen them in
the driveway before that night. It's pretty crazy that this
happened to me, but I'm also proud of myself for
how quickly I reacted and how I was able to
make it out unharmed. It definitely made my job more stressful, though,
and soon after I was able to change my shifts
to only working during the day on the weekends. I
really hope that last guy got caught, though, because who
knows how many more people could be in those horrifying
situations due to his escape. I worked as a food
delivery driver during my first few years of college. Mainly
I would drive for a DoorDash or Uber Eats. I
didn't like making small talk with strangers and didn't want
random people in my car, so I preferred delivering food
over being a normal Uber driver. I did this for
over a year with pretty much no issues, aside from
the occasional customer mad that the restaurant messed up their order. Anyways,
it was late Wednesday night and I didn't have any
classes in the morning, so I decided to make an
extra few bucks and deliver for a little bit. I
did four or five quick orders and ended up about
twenty minutes from my dorm. It was about one am now,
and I figured I should probably end it there and
head back. The way the delivery apps work is pretty
much you just drive around and wait for a random
ordered to pop up, and then it'll give you an
estimate of how much you'll make and how far it is.
Then you either accept or decline it. On my way back,
I left the app running just in case there was
a really quick delivery nearby. I got a few requests,
but they were a bit too far and didn't seem
worth it to me. But then another one popped up
just as I was pulling into my dorm. It was
about twelve miles away, but the payout was really big.
I'd never seen anyone offer that much money before. I
gave us some thought as it was pretty far, but
it was too much money to pass up. I accepted
the offer and started the directions to the restaurant. A
few minutes later, I arrived and pulled up their order
so I can make sure I picked up the right stuff.
As I walked through the doors, I noticed the customer.
I'd only ordered two items and the total was only
over six dollars. Was really unusual, as typically the high
paying orders are because of large deliveries of expensive food.
This meant that they were just giving me a really
big tip. I got the food and went back to
the car. During the drive there, I was really just
trying to understand why they would give such a big
tip for such a small order. It was a little weird,
but honestly, I just came to the conclusion that it
was either just a mistake or they were trying to
be kind. Although twelve miles wasn't too far from my campus,
I had actually never been to this area. It was
really nice, with mostly gated off neighborhood communities and huge houses. Luckily,
their house wasn't gated and I was able to just
pull into the neighborhood. I looked at the homes as
I passed by and realized that the tip money made
a lot more sense now. The street was long, though,
and I was just a couple minutes from the house.
When the customer sent me a text through the app,
they told me to make sure I delivered the food
to the right address. When I pulled up, I figured
maybe the map showed his neighbor's house or something, so
when I arrived, I sent him a text with a
description of the house and asked if that was the
right one. He replied no, and I waited for a
little bit, expecting him to describe his house for me,
but he never did. I sent him another text describing
his neighbor's house, to which he replied no again. I
was starting to get pretty annoyed with this guy and
tried calling him instead, but he refused the answer. He
would ring a few times and then he'd declined the call.
I looked at the address again and then copy and
pasted it into Google to try and look it up there.
Doing this, I actually noticed that the number for the
app address wasn't a regular number. It had a subset
of numbers on it. I'd never seen this before and
wasn't even sure what it meant, so I searched the
address on Google and looked at the results. When I
zoomed in on the map, I saw that the address
actually pointed to a spot right in between the two houses.
Zooming in further, it looked like there was a really
small garage or maybe even a shed. It was barely visible.
I looked up from my phone and moved my eyes
to between the two houses, and sure enough, there was
a small garage like structure. It was just a few
feet from the main house that my delivery app brought
me to. I honestly wasn't sure what to expect or
why someone would even live there, but I already came
this far, so I wasn't about to walk away now,
so I got out and started heading over. As I
walked up the driveway, I could clearly see what the
place was. It was pretty much just a large storage garage,
probably meant for keeping an old car or something. I
didn't see any normal door, though, so I put the
bag down by the garage door. As I began taking
my phone out to take a picture for the app,
a man came around the right side of the garage.
I looked over at him and he just stood still
staring at me. The guy was really creeping me out,
so I said, it's right here for you, sir, as
I pointed at the bag and slowly started walking away.
Then he replied, telling me that this wasn't where he
wanted me to drop it off. I turned around and
noticed that he was still standing in the same spot. Sorry,
where did you want me to put it? I said,
starting to get really uneasy about the situation. He pointed
around the back of the garage said that the door
was over there. At that point, there was no way
I was going to follow that guy to wherever he
was trying to get me to go. I just kind
of stood there for a moment, then said sorry and
quickly walked back to my car. I looked over one
more time before driving away, and the man was walking
back behind the garage, but he left the bag of food.
I got out of there and drove back to my dorm,
shaking the whole way back. Something about that whole thing
felt very off, and the fact that it was in
a really nice neighborhood made me even more confused. The
more I thought about it, though, I realized just how
strange it was that he needed to specify for me
not to deliver to the main house, and that he
refused to take the food unless I followed him. To
behind the garage. I'd never had to call the police
before in my whole life, and I ended up not
calling them this time either, as I really wasn't sure
if maybe he was just some weird, harmless guy. Anyways,
it freaked me out for a few days, but eventually
I got over it and continued doing deliveries in my
spare time. Nothing else happened, though. A couple weeks later,
I had another big order pop up on my app
and the area of delivery was the same. I obviously
declined it, but I couldn't help but think about whoever
ended up accepting that order and what happened to them
during their delivery. It was the beginning of fall and
I worked as a cashier at a small store near
my apartment. My usual shift ended at nine pm, and
then i'd usually go do food deliveries for a couple
of hours before heading home. I actually enjoyed doing deliveries
at night, as the roads weren't busy and most other
delivery drivers would work during the day and would take
all the orders, so I'd actually get more orders to
do at night. Anyways, I had just gotten out of
work and set up my app to get ready to
do some deliveries. The first one that came in was
quick and only took about fifteen minutes. Then I waited
for a few minutes before the next order came in.
It was a good payout and the delivery address was
twenty minutes away from where I was. I headed over
to the fast food restaurant to pick up their food,
then started making my way over to the house. The
town I live in isn't too big and has a
lot of empty plots of land. There's the main center
of town, which is where my apartment is and most
of the restaurants. Then about ten minutes out there's a
lot of farm land and the houses are much more
spread out. Almost all of the deliveries I get are
within the town area, but every once in a while
I'll get a delivery further out into the farm area.
I assumed this was going to be a farmhouse since
it was twenty minutes away. However, the app said that
the address was located in a small neighborhood area just
off of a small highway. I didn't like delivering to
isolated farmhouses at night, as it just kind of creeped
me out, so I was happy to be delivering to
a neighborhood home. Once I got off the highway, I
turned left and started making my way down the road
toward the neighborhood. But almost immediately I got a call
from an unknown number. I declined it as I thought
it was just a scam, but just a few seconds
later they called again. Figuring it was probably the customer,
I accepted it. Hello, I asked. A few seconds went
by with no response, so I just hung up, but
then again, just a few moments later, the same number
called me. I answered, and almost imediately a guy speaks
and tells me I turned the wrong way. I asked
him what he meant, as I had the map up
and it says that I'm going the right way, But
he said his address gets messed up on the delivery
app and that he always has to call and let
the drivers know where to go. I said okay, and
asked him how to get there. He told me that
when I got off the highway, I needed to take
a right from that road, then take the third left.
He mentioned it was a gravel path that led to
his farmhouse at the end. I told him i'd be
there in a few minutes and turn the car around.
I've had multiple customers call me before to tell me
that the address was a little off or to give
me directions on unnamed roads, as it was pretty common
out here, so I honestly didn't think much of it.
I passed the highway that I turned off of and
continued until I found the third left and turned onto
the gravel path. The path went into a small forest
of trees, and it was really dark. Again. I didn't
like these areas at night, so I was definitely a
little nervous driving down this isolated gravel road. Once I
started getting nervous, I began thinking about how strange it
was that the map had taken me so far in
the opposite direction of the house that the man claims
is his actual address. I tried to bury those thoughts,
assuring myself that I was just overthinking it because I
was nervous. A couple minutes past, though, and there was
still no house in sight. At this point, I wasn't
even sure if I had turned down the right path,
but the trees were too close to the sides, so
I didn't have much room to turn around. Anyways. I
figured i'd continue down to the end, then called to
ask if I had the right place and turn around
there if not. Another minute or two went by before
I finally reached the end as it merged into a
small circle driveway next to a house. I drove up
to the that led to the front door and parked
the car next to a four sale sign that was
put up in the front of the house. Seeing that,
I wasn't sure if I had the right house, but
I looked over at the front door and it was open,
and I could see someone further back wave at me.
Figuring I was good, I grabbed the bag and started
making my way over to the door. As I stepped
onto the porch and began putting the bag down, I
saw the man again down the hallway that led to
the kitchen. He politely asked me if I could set
the food down on the kitchen counter, then quickly walked
away as if he was in a rush, and then
I heard him turn the sink on in the kitchen hesitantly.
I took a step into the house and looked around.
It was decorated with old furniture and accessories, but it
almost looked like it was completely unused. I quickly made
my way down the hall and into the kitchen, but
as soon as I got there, I noticed that the
sink was still running, but the man was nowhere in sight.
This made chills run down my body, and I quickly
set the bag down on the counter and got out
of there as quick as I could. I could hear
the man yell something from the front door as I
got back in my car, but I couldn't understand what
he said. I put the car in drive and went
back out the way I came. I didn't stop driving
until I got to the parking lot of my apartment.
Then I pulled my phone out and saw multiple missed
calls from that same number. I blocked the number, then
opened the delivery app so I could end my deliveries
for the night. But that's when I noticed that I
had messages from the customer through the app telling me
that I had turned the wrong way and that I
was at the wrong house. I went into shock for
a moment, realizing that the man that had called me
wasn't my actual customer and the house I was in
was just some stranger's house. I called the police immediately
and reported everything to them. An officer came to my
apartment to go over more details soon after. I had
no idea how this man could have known that I
was doing a delivery and had been able to see
my location. The officer said that my phone had likely
been hacked and that the man was probably monitoring everything
that I was doing. Hearing this made me really uncomfortable,
as if all that wasn't bad enough. The next day,
I was informed that the house I was at was
actually vacant, as it was for sale by the owners
who had moved out months ago. The man had apparently
gotten in through an unlocked window in one of the rooms.
As of right now, they still haven't found anything significant
that could lead to finding the man, which makes me
feel really unsafe. I don't know for sure what the
man was trying to do, but I think it's a
pretty good assumption that he was probably planning on kidnapping me,
or maybe even worse. I try not to think about
it too much, but I can't help but go over
all the horrible things that could have happened spened on
that night.