absence and close call

Hey, Bruce & All. It's been a while.

I have been a little absent lately while reorganizing a lot of aspects of my life. I had something really unfortunate happen to me on 6/26/06. Here's the news article.

We live in a really violent, scary world sometimes.

Basically, I had my front door broken through while me, my sister (who I was living with), my ex-girlfriend and my sister's partner were all within the residence. The girls were sexually assaulted. I was smacked probably 15-20 times with a loaded pistol, which was fired multiple times within very close proximity to myself. I've never bled so much before. My sister's boyfriend Josh was also beat severely. We were all kidnapped in our own vehicles and forced to withdraw money from our bank accounts at a nearby ATM and then dumped on the side of the road. The entire attack took around two hours, most of that time, having a loaded gun either pointed in my face or pressed against the back of my head. Literally all of our belongings were stolen, but that was the least of our concerns.

We were all lucky to have lived. Both Josh and I spent around eight hours in a trauma 3 ward getting stitched, glued, and stapled back together again. I had a concussion and busted some teeth, nose broken in three places, three large gashes requiring twenty-five or so stitches on my face and five contusions across my head. My brain was thankfully okay, with no (at least obvious) lasting damage.

I'm still recovering from the incident, psychologically. It was the first time in my life to really have faced the prospect of death. None of us were hysterical, unreasonable, not rational. We calmly answered their questions, responded to them, did what they said, even while they were beating us. They were kind of baffled as to why we weren't flipping out more, I think. I rode in my sister's car in the passenger seat with the primary assailant in the back, gun pressed up against the back of my head, in kind of a daze. I remember feeling that metal on the back of my head and knowing there was absolutely nothing I could do to save myself that wouldn't basically forfeit my life or the life of other people in the car.

I had always thought I would never do anything to allow myself into that situation but I underestimated how much I loved the people I was with, I suppose. I knew that if I had been shot in the head, Josh or my sister would have done something, anything to keep anyone else from being shot; but until I was shot, it wasn't sensical to risk our lives. The most logical course of action was to either die or not die by the hands of this assailant, to just sit there and wait for my life to terminate, forever, or not. It was all chance. I really expected to die.

Then I heard a gunshot. I was still alive. He had diverted the gun slightly and fired it, to let us know that he was serious. As if that wasn't surreal enough, we went back to the drill and the threats until we were dumped off.

It was really horrifying. We had no connection with the assailants; We never met them, never saw them before. They were apprehended two weeks later, thankfully. They had randomly picked our house because they assumed we had money (we didn't really have any cash in the house, causing a lot of violence and problems on us).

Anyways, I hope to return to the forums, but I wanted to share that with you all. Life can change in an absolute instant. One moment you can be getting ready to go out for a late dinner and the next be staring down the barrel of a gun, imminent headshot, no chance of cryonics working in time. Please be careful, all of you. Make sure your doors are sturdy and the siding on them isn't weak; engage the deadbolts. If you can avoid it, live in a statistically safer area. It might be a one in a million chance of being randomly selected as the target of violence, but small things like a sturdy door or a deadbolt might have bought us the time we needed to keep from being ambushed so quickly.

I'm still in the process of putting my life back together. I moved near Lexington, Virginia with a couple of my friends and am looking for work here, rebuilding everything. I'm on dialup on a borrowed laptop at the moment, but I hope to return to the forum debates as soon as I'm capable. I'm glad to see everything is still moving along, and really love the articles on the front page.

Thanks, everybody.

These are those truly horrible things we can face in life and I am glad no one was killed and that you were smart enough to not provoke these animals into doing any worse than they did. It was wise to cooperate and live another day though the trauma must have been awful.

It is good they were caught and aside from the insanity you will have to face if they litigate it is worth taking them to task and pressing the prosecutor for the stiffest penalties. I am sorry to hear this story but glad you have returned to us and I hope you are all on the mend and return to full health, both emotional and physical.

I agree with you about the importance of where we choose to live but the world gets smaller all the time and we must also learn to band together in our defense. Communities that know one another and stand together face this kind of threat better than those that are all strangers to each other. It is not a guarantee but it is a step in the right direction.

Wow... welcome back. We're here to help.

Please be careful, all of you. Make sure your doors are sturdy and the siding on them isn't weak; engage the deadbolts. If you can avoid it, live in a statistically safer area. It might be a one in a million chance of being randomly selected as the target of violence, but small things like a sturdy door or a deadbolt might have bought us the time we needed to keep from being ambushed so quickly

Thank you.

Hey Armrha. It has been a sad turn of events not only for yourself but also for people who are close to you. The good thing is that you all came out of the situation alive. Going by what you have said, those ones who assaulted you guys were capable of committing murder, may have even done so in the past. I wish that all make a full recovery.

As for those criminals who carried out this crime; You might already know how I feel about rapists, they should be destroyed. The judicial system in Canada and the United States is lax even for heinous crimes like these; I can only hope that they, those ones who assulted you people, get what they deserve.

I'm so sorry to hear this happened to you and your family. Don't push yourself too hard in your recovery and believe me, the recovery continues long after the physical wounds are healed. Take no responsibility for this incident.

I've had my life turned topsy-turvy from the same sort of thing before and wish it on no one. I am thinking of you and yours with compassion. If you (or your Sister or Roommates) ever need to talk you can PM me.

Take no responsibility for this incident.


That is an understatement, and it is very important to get that to sink in. I am glad nobody was killed. Take care, and do what you can for yourself and loved ones at your own speed.

chris

Thanks everybody. I really appreciate the kind words. 123456, I definitely know your views on the topic. Mine haven't changed, either, though I always wondered if they would...

Being around them gave me the feeling of being around incredibly broken people, people with defects so great that they could do such a thing. We don't currently have the technology to repair them but I don't know the proper thing to do about it. They'll be in jail for a long time, though. The leader has bail set at 1,500,000$USD, the second man, 800,000$, and the person who dropped them off, a woman, is at 300,000$. They're facing charges from rape, kidnapping, assault w/ severe injury, assault and battery, burgulary, multiple 1st degree counts on all. They've retrieved multiple bullets from our home and matched the ballistics to a handgun the primary assailant had, and each one of us was able to pick him out of a lineup without hesitation.

Wow... what a harrowing story! Our thoughts are with you as you work through putting this behind you and getting your life back together.

It's amazing that this actually happened to one of the members here. The only thing worse than the early ending of a life by human intentions is the ending of a life where the person has realized and seeks immortality. Robbing a man of 60 years is nothing compared to robbing them of thousands.

It's tough to live our life in fear (or even consciousness) of such statistically improbable events, but your story serves as a good warning to those of us who do share the goals of this community.

Best wishes.

Astonishing. Relieved to hear everyone will physically recover. Advise to be very mindful of post-traumatic stress and suggest you and others seek ongoing counselling ASAP if you have not already done so.

I manage a business where I occasionally have a lot of cash on the premises. And people wonder why I've bought a shotgun and a couple of handguns . . .

I hope they never get used.

As if the inanimate universe was not perilous enough. That sentient creatures are facing such "liabilities" from amongst ourselves is truly the peak of irony.

I manage a business where I occasionally have a lot of cash on the premises. And people wonder why I've bought a shotgun and a couple of handguns . . .

We had a shotgun hidden away in a discrete part of the closet. The only way I would have been able to help with a handgun was if I was literally carrying all the time, every day, day in and day out (I had just changed clothes). I feel like even then it would have just been reduced to a gun fight where somebody was absolutely certain to die or at least be seriously injured. I feel like after they had established control of the situation if the shotgun had been found it would have certainly been used against us, as a threat if not actually shot us with. They definitely took the knives they found and threatened us with them. They maced my sister and her boyfriend with a can of mace on my sister's keychain, thought it was funny that she had it.

Still, at least the cards would have been in my hands instead of being at the mercy of the criminals. I am only alive because he decided not to pull the trigger at any of those times.

Astonishing. Relieved to hear everyone will physically recover. Advise to be very mindful of post-traumatic stress and suggest you and others seek ongoing counselling ASAP if you have not already done so.

I am doing so. I thought I would be okay, and it would be just like any other event in my life albeit more dangerous, but it really was not the case. An event like that definitely weights the neurons in unfortunate directions and not having someone objective and professional to talk to just pushes you into exceedingly dangerous situations sometimes...

As if the inanimate universe was not perilous enough. That sentient creatures are facing such "liabilities" from amongst ourselves is truly the peak of irony.

I thought so too, even while it was happening. Before that incident, I had the foolish notion that maybe I didn't live in an area or around folks who would engage in such archaic and destructive behavior. Apparently it holds true that we are our own worse enemy, though. We need to grow up as a species...

We had a shotgun hidden away in a discrete part of the closet. The only way I would have been able to help with a handgun was if I was literally carrying all the time, every day, day in and day out (I had just changed clothes). I feel like even then it would have just been reduced to a gun fight where somebody was absolutely certain to die or at least be seriously injured.

I believe you are correct. I am glad you can see this perspective so soon after your trauma. Whether it feels like it at the time, ending a life, even in self-defense has consequences to the heart as grave as surviving an experience like yours.

Your actions were correct and clean. I'm very glad you and yours survived.

Hey Armrha,

I have a small understanding of what you went through in that three friends and I were held at gunpoint tonight while walking back from a café to Pixar (which is located in the Oakland area). I’m really happy the perpetrators only wanted our wallets and pen numbers (which they promptly typed into their cell phones) before getting back in their stolen car and driving away.

Bruce

As I don't want to hijack Armrha's thread, I'll be happy to elaborate in this thread:
http://www.imminst.o...=ST&f=1&t=12872

fucking sonsofbitches [ang]

Glad you're still somewhat ok armrha.

this is one of the reasons I'm getting a shutzhund level III german shephard, probably 2 large over 120 lb males.

I'm really paranoid about this kindof stuff and have a really big knife under my bed, as well as numerous trainig courses on guge gonji, da zhimminge, and dim mak.