[quote]pushharder wrote:
I got robbed on board an Amtrak train, the Empire Builder, rumbling westbound across Minnesota at night about six years ago.
Was in the dining car eating supper when the man who had been sitting behind me all the way from Buffalo approached and warned me that a guy had sat in my seat after I left to go eat. He told me the guy grabbed my cell phone I had left plugged in to charge in the AC outlet next to the seat, called his ma and yapped for a good 15 minutes or so. Then he took off. The guy that warned me had not seen the thief’s face.
I rushed back to my seat and found my cell phone and laptop computer were missing. We were in the next to last car on the train and I was told the guy had headed to the rear. I went to the next car with the guy who had reported the theft to me in tow and started checking everyone out, asking questions and looking into the eyes of every single male in the car.
When I asked out loud if anyone had seen anyone else talking on a cell phone in the last few minutes, someone pointed to this one guy cowering in his seat. I asked if he had a phone. He said he didn’t. Another passenger reaffirmed he had just seen the guy talking on a cell phone so I realized the little snake was lying.
Went and got the conductor who suggested the three of us go downstairs to the lavatory area so as not to make a scene. The guy was a nervous wreck and I could tell he was lying. I wanted to knock his block off and bloody his nose but the conductor warned me to take it easy as he was going to make an unscheduled stop to allow the police on board.
I went upstairs and searched the car. Found my laptop along with an identifying bottle of prescription pills stuffed in the guy’s back pack under another seat. Went back down and told the guy I’d found my computer in his back pack and knew it was his back pack because the pill bottle had his name on it. Asked again where my phone was. He continued to lie and say he knew nothing about what I was talking about.
I was hot. As the train started to brake toward the stop, I whispered in his ear encouraging him to make a run for it when the train doors opened. I wanted him to run so I could chase him down and thump on him.
As it turned out, when the door opened the sheriff deputies were standing right there to arrest him and he couldn’t/wouldn’t run. Shucks.
The conductor searched the lavatory and found my phone in the trash bin and presented it to me. Apparently, the conductor had allowed the guy to use the lav while I was upstairs searching for my computer and the guy had pulled the phone out of his pocket and threw it away.
Cops hauled him away and the train rumbled on.
Two days later after I had arrived home in Montana, I received a phone call on my cell phone from an elderly woman in Seattle who asked me if I knew her son, Bob, and why he might have not got off the train in Seattle when she showed up to pick him up. She called the number (mine) on her caller ID looking for her boy. I told Ma that her son was sitting in a Minnesota jail.
She apologized and said Bob had just been released from prison in Michigan and the dear old wayward son “who has always been in trouble” was on his way to see her in Seattle. Oh well. I did feel bad for the woman.
The Minnesota district attorney called me a day or two later and said the guy had plead not guilty in his preliminary hearing and asked if I would be willing to travel back to MN to testify in the trial. I said “Of course.”
When the defense attorney and Bob found out I was willing to return and testify, he changed his plea to guilty so there was no trial.
She, the D.A. also told me the pills I had found in his back pack were to treat his AIDS condition. At that point I was pleased I had not popped him in the nose down by the lavatory in the train and sprayed blood all over me.[/quote]
Cool story!
