Speaker 1: I was driving home from my friend's house. It was late.
I don't know exactly the time, but if I had
to guess, it was probably two or three am. I
lived twenty minutes away, which wasn't too far since most
houses around here are spread out. The rain and lack
of street lights made it hard to see, though, so
I was driving slower and more carefully. Five minutes down
the road, I pulled up to a traffic light. I
had the red light, but there was a blue car
on the other side who was on the road partially
in the intersection. Its headlights and everything were on, but
it was just sitting there at a green light. I
couldn't tell if there was something wrong or maybe they
were asleep, but when the lights changed, I drove forward,
slowly maneuvering around them. I tried to discreetly look in
their car as I passed, but the rain on my
window blocked most of my view. Only a moment after
passing them and driving down the road again, the blue
car turned and started following me down the road, so
it wasn't broken down after all. I kept my eye
on the mirrors. I wouldn't consider myself a paranoid person,
but the situation felt staged. Another minute down the road,
the car's headlights started getting brighter in my mirrors as
they pulled their car closer to what felt like just
a couple of feet from my back bumper. In weather
like this, that made me really uncomfortable. I looked back
at the road, but saw a small light pop up
on my dashboard. It was a signal that one of
my tires was low on air, a common signal, but
it felt like an odd time for it just to
pop up given the situation. I looked back in my mirrors,
seeing the cars still tailing me. They were so close
their headlights almost made it hard to even see the
actual car. I was just four or five minutes away
from home, nearing the entrance to the neighborhood, when my
dashboard started flickering a new signal, flat tire. My stomach
dropped the second I saw that signal. I put all
the pieces together and was almost one hundred percent sure
that this car behind me had done something. I drove
another minute, hoping to make it closer to home, but
I could feel my car sinking to the left, and
I was practically driving on the rims now. I had
to pull over. The car behind me did the same.
I should have called someone as soon as I parked,
but I was so concerned and focused with what the
person behind me was doing that it didn't even cross
my mind. Though even if I did call someone, it
probably wouldn't have prevented what happened next. Once parked, three
doors opened from the car and three men came out.
I only had a few seconds to prepare and react,
but I was helpless and defenseless. They ran up to
my car, two on my side and one on the other.
One of the men came right up to my window,
yelling at me to open the door and pointing a
gun at me. It happened so fast I was just
in some dazed state. I started to reach for the door,
but the man by the back door smashed something against
the window, shattering it, then reached his hand in and
opened the back door. They were all still yelling, both
at me and at each other. The man in the
back reached across opening the other back door, then reached
in front of me to open my door. I was
still just sitting there, holding my hands up now to
show I wasn't a threat. I knew there was no
way out of this, even if I did have a weapon.
Once my door was open, the man with the gun
pulled me out of the car and slammed me on
the ground. The oddest thing is, while I was on
the ground looking out into the rainy pavement, all I
was thinking about was how cold and wet the pavement.
Was not about how I had a gun being pushed
into the back of my head or that I was
being robbed and beaten. I think it was my head
trying to distance myself from the traumatizing situation I was in.
I wasn't on the ground for long before the men
by the car called out and the guy holding me
down hit me in the back of the head, causing
me to recochet off the pavement. I wasn't even sure
if he hit me with the gun or just his fist,
because I was already numb. I'm surprised it didn't knock
me out, though I heard their car doors close and
then driving away. I rolled over, still in a daze
and tried to pick myself up. They'd taken my phone,
so I was forced to drive my car home and
call the police when I got there, which ended up
denting and damaging my rims. Anyway, the investigation went nowhere,
determining only that the suspects had purposefully placed small tire
spikes in the road at the intersection I crossed them at.
I got lucky to have only hit one spike and
four to have caused less damage than usual. They likely
planned to ambush me as soon as I hit the trap,
but in the end it didn't make a difference. I'm
twenty four and I lived alone with my dog Bear
in a cozy town home up until three months ago.
I moved in when I turned twenty two, having a
decent enough job. I loved the home, being the first
place I'd ever rented for myself, but two years of
happy living was ruined by this one night. It was
gloomy outside and raining quite a lot. It was my
day off, so I was sitting on a chair in
my living room scrolling off my phone. It was eight pm,
which was just an hour before I usually went to bed.
Bear had been sitting by the back door for a
while looking outside. He started whining and ran up to me,
which was his way of communicating to me that he
needed to go outside. I got up and let him out,
then closed the door and stood in the kitchen. While
it was just a town home, there was a small
fence separating the backyards, so I didn't have to worry
about Bear running away or anything. Also, I shouldn't mention
that Bear isn't a large dog at all. He's just
fluffy and small, like a teddy bear. Not long, maybe
fifteen or twenty seconds after I let him outside, I
heard him whimper and bark. It was very clearly a
cowering bark, like he was running away from something. It
scared me, and I rushed to the door and looked out,
seeing Bear running back towards me with his tail between
his legs. Once he was inside, I leaned my head
outside and scanned the back yard, expecting a coyote or
something to be lurking by the fence, but nothing was there.
I made sure Bear was okay and locked up my door.
He never does anything like that, so that made me
really worried for him. I let him sit on my
lap for the rest of the night. Through the next
thirty minutes, he was constantly perking his head up and
staring at the windows and doors, a different one each time. Then,
after forty five minutes of sitting there. Bear turned his
head and stared at the window behind me, lowering his
ears and growling. Bear, I said, turning to look where
he was looking, and right in the window, just a
couple feet from us, was a man staring back at me.
He was almost right up against the glass. I jumped
up and screamed, stepping backwards. The man sprinted away down
the side of the house. Bear started barking again from
the sudden chaos. I closed the blinds and checked all
of the others, making sure they were closed as well.
From the quick glimpse I got, I didn't recognize the man.
I didn't know who he was, or what he was
doing here, or why he was staring at me. I
tried to listen for any more indications that he was
still around, but the rain outside was too loud, covering
up any possible sounds. Bear seemed calmer, though, so I
stayed up for a while longer just to be safe,
then went upstairs and had Bear sleep in my room
with me. It took a long time for me to
fall asleep, having a lot on my mind, but after
an hour or so I slowly dozed off. When I woke,
Bear was standing up right by the bedroom door, staring
at it. This was a freaky thing to see, waking
up in the middle of the night. But not even
seconds later I heard something below me, a man talking,
and not long after a man on the other side
of the house talking back. Their footsteps were loud, and
they didn't even seem to be whispering either. It was
like they didn't care if I knew that they were
inside my home. My bedroom door was locked, but I
had nowhere else to go. I went over to Bear, quietly,
trying to keep him calm, then picked him up and
went over to the corner of my room behind the bed.
It took me a while to realize, but then it
struck me that I hadn't heard any noises at all
in the past minute, no steps or voices. This was
when I took my phone out and called the police,
whispering as softly as I could as I told them
my address. Bear started a low growl, then began barking
and whining. As two sets of footsteps started making their
way up the stairs. I begged for the operator to
send someone immediate. The two men started talking to each
other again, but it was hard to make out their words. Hey,
we just want to talk. We're not here to hurt you,
I screamed, saying I called the cops and for them
to leave. I was panicking, not knowing what else to do.
There was a pause afterwards. We're here to help you,
one of the men said. I didn't respond, as I
was busy trying to muffle my crying. Opened the door.
It got quiet again. I could only hear them breathing
behind the door for what felt like a whole minute,
before one of them walked back down the stairs. I
couldn't tell where they went downstairs, or if they'd left
or not, but I was sure that it was just
one set of footsteps that left the bedroom door. It
was so quiet, though, and I couldn't hear any breathing.
In the far distance. The soft sound of sirens started
to get louder. A sense of safety was finally coming back.
Once the sirens got closer, I heard footsteps running out
of the house downstairs, but now I was unsure of
where the other man was. It seemed really unlikely for
him to be by my door still, but I could
swear I never heard him leave. I waited for the
police to pull up and make their way inside I
heard them searching downstairs, then slowly make their way upstairs
and knock on my door. I almost didn't want to answer,
still thinking that other men had to be somewhere nearby.
When I opened the door, though it was just an officer,
I immediately told him about my concerns. He directed me out
of the house as one of his partners continued searching,
but nobody was found. The only thing they were able
to find was watery footprints all around the house, as
well as an unlocked window, which, to be honest, I
wasn't sure if I kept locked or not. It terrified
me though, feeling so confident that the other man was
still there, never hearing him leave, but then there being
no trace of him. It made it impossible to sleep
at night, having this feeling of someone still in the
house watching me. I moved out three months ago. It
was too much stress on my mind having a loose
end like that, especially since neither of them were ever
identified or arrested. There was no clear intention the men
had either, which is just another question added to the
list of uncertainty. Even now, living miles away in a
new apartment, I still sometimes feel like I'm not alone.
I work at a convenience store at the corner of
a small shopping strip. It's basically a smaller local version
of a seven to eleven. I worked morning shifts for
a while, which started at three am and ended at
one pm. I agreed to these shifts because they were
always the slowest and require the least amount of work.
All the parts of my job included tending to customers,
filling the shelves, and taking out the trash, which pretty
much meant I had nothing to do. It was the
middle of winter at the time this happened, but I
live in a warmer state, so it usually rains instead
of snows. It was a light poor outside, but it
was enough to keep most people away. On early mornings
like these, I like to lean against the front of
the building outside and smoke to pass the time. I
wasn't supposed to, but there wasn't anyone to stop me.
Along the shopping strip where maybe eight or nine other
stores connected to hours, All of them were stores with
normal hours, so none of them were at were open
until around six or seven in the morning. So when
I saw a car pull into the parking lot while
I was smoking outside, I of course assumed they were
coming to the convenience store. I burned out my cigarette
and tossed it in the trash, then headed back inside
and around the corner. There really was nothing to do,
so I was just waiting for the customer to come
in and leave so I could get back to being
bored alone. After a few minutes of nobody coming in, though,
I walked back around the corner and checked outside the door.
The car was still there, parked in a parking space nearby,
but the headlights were off and as far as I
could tell, nobody was inside. Again. It was lightly raining
outside and all the other stores were still closed, so
I was a bit confused as to where they went.
I took one last look around, seeing nobody, then closed
the door and went back inside. Thirty more minutes of
nothing went by, and I I think I was just
standing in the same spot behind the counter for the
whole time, spacing out. I checked the time, seeing I'd
only been at work for a little over an hour,
and decided I should check the trash cans around the
store and toss them in the dumpster out back. I
walked around to each trash bin, putting the bag in
the cart and replacing it with a new bag. As
I was doing this, I heard a faint click sound
come from outside. It sounded like something snapping or breaking,
but between the rain hitting the roof and the sound
being somewhat far away, it was impossible to tell what
it was or where exactly it came from. In the
moment it happened, though I barely even thought about it.
It just didn't seem like anything worth thinking about, just
another random sound that these old buildings made. Once I
filled the cart with all the trash bags, I rolled
it into the back room and unlocked the back door
that led to the dumpster. I sighed, seeing as the
rain was pouring down harder now, of course, right when
I actually needed to go outside. Regardless, I pushed the
cart through the rain and over to the dumpster, which
was directly across from the door. After tossing in all
the trash, I turned back and started heading for the door,
but I noticed something was out of place. The store
directly connected to mine had its door wedged open. I'd
never seen anyone there earlier than six, so it made
me think. I went back inside to get out of
the rain and went out to the front door and
looked at the other store's door. All the lights were
off and it looked locked up and empty, like it
always was. At this time, I thought for a few
more minutes before figuring I had nothing better to do
and went back outside by the dumpster and walked up
to the open door again. All the lights were off,
but it seemed to lead into a small closet type room,
which then had another door, probably leading to the main storeroom.
I stepped inside, standing in between the doorway so as
to not make it seem like I was trying to
sneak in or something. Standing inside, now, I could hear
someone moving around in the other room, walking opening drawers.
It sounded like they were making a mess, which then
got me thinking even more, Hey, is everything okay in there?
I called out, hoping to get a reassuring response from
a neighboring store worker. The noises stopped. I waited a
few seconds before I realized that this was not normal
and something was definitely wrong. I stepped back outside and
into the rain. As I quickly made my way back
to my store, I recognized something was missing from the
door I had just left. It took a second to
figure it out, but then I saw that there was
no handle. It was just an empty hole where the
handle and lock usually are. Then I looked down at
the wedge that was holding the door open, seeing now
that it was actually the broken door handle. I ran
back into my store, locking all the doors and called
nine one one, as well as my store manager. Once
I knew they were on their way, I went up
to the wall connecting our stores and put my ear
against it, listening to the suspected robbery taking place. Whoever
it was had to have known that I called the
police because they were moving quickly, now running all around,
tossing or knocking things over. After thirty seconds to a
minute of this, I saw lights flash outside and heard
sirens approaching the back of the building. The footsteps quickly
moved to the back of the store before a bunch
of loud yelling came, which I assumed was the officers.
I checked out the back door after a minute, seeing
a less hectic scene, and walked out to talk to
the officers. I thanked them for coming so quickly and
gave them a statement. The man who was arrested was
found with a pillowcase full of nearly six thousand dollars
worth of stolen items. He also had an empty firearm,
along with a variety of tools used to break down
doors and locks, and unknown to me, he'd also broken
into the store two spots down as well. It's unclear
whether or not the man knew I was working at
the time, but my store lights were on, so it
isn't likely that he would have broken into my store,
but several large scratches were found on the back of
our door handle, which may have been from a previous attempt.