A couple of nights ago, my friend dropped me off home after work and a quick dinner. Before I alighted from her car, I pressed my auto-gate to open while I finished my conversation with her.
As I got out, I realized I had not stopped the gate mid-way but had allowed it to gape wide open which would take longer for me to close the gate. Stepping in and quickly activating the shutting of my gate, I suddenly heard the dreaded motorbike sound coming around the corner. I turned to take note of the motorcyclists and noted there were two people on the motorbike. Not a good sign.
As her usual precaution, my friend waited for me to safely get into the house and was ensuring her car doors were securely locked. Even as I watched through my painfully slowly closing gate, I saw the bike make a sharp u-turn and the pillion rider jumped off and run towards the drivers’ window. For a split second, I had the hope he was merely going to ask her for directions. Yes, even if it was past 10pm.
Alas, that wasn’t the case when I saw him attacking her window. I yelled “Woi!!! WOI!! WOI!!!” (I really didn't know what else to shout) at the top of my voice and stepped out of the house to help my friend before realizing I was unarmed and was also carrying my own handbag with no one in the house to help. Instead, I stepped back and blocked my gate from closing, all the while still shouting for him to stop.
By that time, he had gained access into the car and was attacking my friend. I shouted even louder, angry with helplessness and terrified he might be attacking her with a knife.
Thankfully, my neighbours heard my yells and had started coming out. At the first sound of a door opening, the robbers fled.
And again, thankfully, my friend had surface scratches and didn’t lose her bag. The neighbours gave us the nearby police station’s phone number for us to make a report.
However, despite having seen the robbers, neither of us could even tell what colour shirts they were wearing. So making a police report was futile and our terrifying experience merely seeped into the system as a statistic of a smash and attempted grab.
I am now paranoid and think I’m being followed everywhere. The whole incident played in my mind several times to see what we could have done to avoid this but really, we took our precautions at every step unless we were paranoid that there was probably a motorbike following us all the way from the office. But if they had followed, they would have already attacked when we stopped the car instead of waiting for a full minute or so.
I shudder to think that if my friend had driven off, I would have been easy picking. I didn’t have any means of defending myself. Or if they had a parang or knives, as these thieves are well known for carrying, the injuries would have been severe.
The experience left me feeling vulnerable and angry that there’s nothing I can do to catch them or to stop such occurrences from repeating.
