“I feel very stressed out. I feel upset, but I am accepting, in a way, that it happened. I can’t go back and change that. But I am very angry because these things, even though they are not as important, they are not life… I worked to gather them, and people need to understand and respect that. If they want something, they should go out and work for it,” she said, a little of her anger showing as she spoke.
The people she referenced are bandits. This 18-year-old had a harrowing experience when she was robbed of her handbag and its contents recently, as she walked along Robb Street one early evening.
She agreed to speak to me because, for her, talking about it is helping her to heal from the experience she said would not wish on anyone else.
“I never thought I would have experienced something like this,” she said candidly. “In 2018, my sister was robbed. She was coming home for lunch and bringing her son home. Someone rode pass her and grabbed her bag. When I heard it, I said that was just an unfortunate incident for her. I have heard of other people getting robbed and I would always say that it wouldn’t be me, I would not be caught in that. But it happened.
“It is not that I am scared about walking on the streets,” she answered when I asked if she was afraid.
“I am scared of walking on the streets and my stuff going missing again. I am scared to walk with my stuff now. I just think, leave everything at home. The freer my hands are, the better.
“The anxiety that goes with having those things, makes it harder to have them on me now.
“Now I have to think about creative ways to hide my money when I am on the street,” she added.
Recalling the experience, the teenager said she had just left her office when it happened.
“I had just walked out of my office and there was no car. So, I am thinking I can either turn back and call a car or walk quickly and get a bus. I decided to walk and get a bus and I usually don’t take the Robb Street route, but my mind just said just walk this way tonight,” she said.
“And you know, I saw the guy who stole the bag? He rode up to me and he passed. It crossed my mind that he wanted to rob me, but I thought I was lucky then and that he just left. So, I crossed the road and continued walking and all I felt was my bag being pulled. I was left shocked, at first. I was like, this is not happening to me right now. I have this way that when something is happening to me like my brains would have a million thoughts going through.
“One of the thoughts I vividly remember was having a flashback to a conversation I had with my sister the day after she was robbed. We were walking down the street and I had my bag with my CXC certificate and documents and I turned and told her told her if someone tries to rob us now I would tell them stop and get my stuff out of the bag.
“But when it happened, I realized it is so different. That it is real. And they don’t really care what you have in your bag. You can’t stop them.
“I think what was really traumatic, you know, [was] realising that all your sentimental things in that bag they just gone with it. They don’t care what is in that bag for you, they just got it and gone with it.
“And at first, I said no, because I couldn’t believe that it was happening. But he took the bag and then he rode off and another guy with a bicycle rode up alongside him and they looked back at me and laughed like saying, ‘Oh we got her stuff’’.
“It was then I started screaming for help and I remember this woman was walking in front. I was trying to catch up to her and screaming but she was just walking, and I don’t blame her, but I was like, why wouldn’t she signal somebody, alert people? She didn’t stop, she kept walking. And then I started to like to run behind them and I run up to Wellington and Robb streets and there it was very dark, and I stopped.
“I looked back and then I saw the woman. I had run pass her eventually. She stopped and was talking to a guard and I don’t know where other people just appear, and I told them I got robbed. There was this old guy who just kept stopping vehicles and saying, ‘This girl got robbed, drive up behind them and see where they gone.’ But the vehicles kept going. But a guy on a motorcycle, don’t know where he came out from, he just pulled up and said I heard that you just got robbed and I said yes. I was crying hysterically at that point. He rode up behind them, and he came back about five minutes later and said he did not see anyone,” she continued the narrative.
“Everybody was asking me, ‘What did they take?’ And I was like, everything was in my bag. I usually have my passage in my pocket, but I had just taken it out and put it in my bag.
“Then the old man asked if I needed a call and I said yes and I called my sister, who was very hysterical, and she was like, ‘Go back to your office now’. I went back to my office and figure I should let somebody know what happened. But I realized that my phone could be tracked, and I said that telling someone could come second let me just track my phone.
“I just wanted them to be caught, so I could get my stuff back. But the phone was off and after the phone was not on, I started getting very frustrated and my colleague noticed something was wrong. And I turned and told her I just got robbed.
“I was so upset and frustrated and hurt at that point. I was surprised at how much I was crying at that stage as well,” she said.
In the company of her sister, the teenager said, she went later that evening to the Brickdam Police Station to report the matter; that experience was not good.
“The reporting was very frustrating. It was slow and at one point I felt like the police were not listening to me. When I first walked in and I got to the CID, I think my facial expression, the way I was looking would have indicated that something bad had happened, you could see that I had just been crying. But the police officer who was sitting in front just looked up from his phone and he asked what the matter was, and I said I was robbed. He looked back down at his phone and continued doing what he was doing.
“I had to say, are you going to help me? And then he signalled to another officer nearby and said deal with this girl. The other officer told me to come and I sat. He opened the book to start taking the report but to me everything was just moving too slow for me.
“I felt if they took the report quickly, we could have gone back to the area and do a patrol quickly. But he took the report and then he said okay that’s it. And I turned and say can’t we do a patrol? At that point I am not only thinking about myself, but that somebody else could be robbed. He said, ‘Yeah’. But he looked like, why is she asking me this?” the teenager further revealed.
“But then to do the patrol, it took like forever… A vehicle brought some men in and I was like when are we going to go? But while waiting they did ask if I recognized any of the men they brought in and I said no.
“We went downstairs and were about to go into the vehicle and the sergeant on duty yelled at the officer and asked where he was going and he was like, ‘I am going and do a patrol this girl just got robbed’. But he [the sergeant said] ‘You can’t take the vehicle!’ And then the officer and the driver the vehicle went to him and they had a conversation and then they came back and we went. But I think it is because I said where I worked that they went. And one of them recognized me too,” she said.
“On the patrol they did seem like they were interested in helping me which I am sure many people cannot say they had that experience,” she added.
“We didn’t find them, and they told me to come back on Monday to give a detailed statement. I went home and I spoke to my mom – she lives overseas – and I told her what happened. She was upset. She was like it is her daughter and she is not there to comfort me, and she shouldn’t have such experience. Afterwards, I just went to my room and sat, and I cried. And then I went to sleep and the next day was another normal day,” she said.“It is only now for me just to try to accept that it happened and that these things are gone and that I am okay, and I am alive…”
She spoke with me just days after the experience.
“But I want justice. I want them to be caught and locked up. My phone is an iPhone and I keep calling hoping it is on because once it is on, I would know instantly where they are,” she said hopefully.
“I want to advise people to never take that risk that I took. Never walk down a lonely dark road in the night,” she cautioned.
We have to try to be safe on the streets, take the necessary precautions sisters, mothers and daughters. Such experiences are indeed harrowing.
