When the muggers rushed out from behind a bush, I thought it was a prank.
When one of them pointed a gun inches from my face, I realized it wasn’t. I realized I was in the midst of another one of those unnerving kids-on-bikes-with-guns news items that we publish all the time in the Independent.
Despite being a reporter, I didn’t notice a whole lot else. Certainly not enough details to make a vivid news item. It made me wonder how often eyewitnesses do get the details right.
Well, it made me wonder that later. At the time, I was wondering if the kid was going to pull the trigger. Wondering, and praying he wouldn’t.
The hold-up took place Saturday evening around 7, a block away from my home in Westville. (That much detail I remembered.)
I was walking home from synagogue with my wife, Carole, and our friend, Rebekah, a recent Yale graduate who was visiting us from out of town.
The closing service for the Sabbath had just ended. It’s the most peaceful time of the week, the end of 25 hours of resting and worshiping and eating — with no working, no telephone calls, no driving or turning on the computer. Carole had chanted the havdalah prayer at the synagogue, a hauntingly beautiful melody recited by the light of a braided candle. The idea is to capture one last taste of the weekly Sabbath spirit before reemerging into the routine weekday world.
That spirit carried over, as usual, to the walk home. In the comfort and quiet of the early evening darkness, we made the turn from Alden Avenue onto Burton Street, the way we do once or twice or three times each weekend, and headed the last two blocks to home.
Two boys on bikes, dressed in black, zoomed by us on the sidewalk. I didn’t think much of it. That’s not where my mind was.
Yes, muggings take place occasionally in our neighborhood, including on this block. In the past few years we’ve told our teen-aged daughters not to walk alone at night. Some other high-schoolers in the neighborhood were once robbed at gunpoint around the corner. (Lt. Billy White, who lives in the neighborhood, caught the perpetrators that night.) One of our friends was held up outside his house. In fact, one Saturday evening in November of 2007 I came across six cruisers on this very block while I was walking back from havdalah; the cops caught two 16-year-old boys who’d been on a mugging expedition.
But that hadn’t happened to us. And it’s been decades since I’d been mugged (not counting being attacked while on my bike one afternoon four years ago). Our neighborhood is generally a safe place. So no, I wasn’t worrying.
We walked most of the way down the block, when the two boys reappeared from the bushes.
At first I didn’t notice it was the same boys. They wore sweatshirts. One boy was tall, the other not. They rushed at us and yelled: “Give me your money! Give me your money!”
I thought it was a joke. I took a look at their masks. Their eyes were visible. From the eyes alone, I concluded they weren’t our friends playing a joke.
It was the night after Halloween. That flashed through my mind: Someone else is maybe playing a joke.
Then I saw the gun. Whoa. This was real.
“Give me your money! Give me your money!” They split up, approaching each of us randomly. Right out on the street, a one-block stretch of lovely one-family homes and gardens.
To one side of them was a judge’s house. To the other, an attorney’s. We could have had a court proceeding right there. Except this was their turf now; they were running the show.
We pleaded our case. We’re Jewish, we said. We don’t carry money on the Sabbath. Check our pockets, it’s true. We don’t have any money!
One of the boys pointed the gun at Carole, then at Rebekah. The other checked my pockets. All he found were some tissues.
They searched Carole and Rebekah and found only a sunglasses case. The other boy came up to me with the gun. I took a look. I thought of all the stories in the Independent about teen-agers mugging people in East Rock with guns that turn out to be fake, facsimiles. I don’t know from guns; I shot a .45 only once, more than 10 years ago, as part of reporting a story. I thought this one looked fake. But I had no way of knowing for sure. My hunch was that the kids were jittery and would ride off. My heart pounded anyway. I was scared the gunman would kill us.
“Don’t shoot!” I pleaded.
He didn’t shoot. The boys fled on their bikes toward Alden Avenue.
Moments later, a driver came up the street. We flagged him down, borrowed his cell phone, called the cops.
Officer Michael Styles showed up within 10 minutes. He was a calming figure, friendly. He asked me to go first in telling the story. I was startled to find how little detail I could offer.
How tall were the kids? Don’t know. Maybe five-ten and five-six. Didn’t see what they looked like, beyond noticing, when they’d first ridden by, that they seemed no older than 16.
Rebekah, who’s half our age, poured out details. What their clothes looked like. What their bikes looked like. What the gun looked like. What one of the kids’ noses looked like.
Rebekah is not a reporter. I felt humbled.
(She also told me later that I’d said, “Oh my God!” a bunch of times during the hold-up.)
Ever the gentleman, Officer Styles waited until I made some self-deprecating remarks before chiming in with a joke about how we should let Rebekah tell the story.
It sounded like the cops were having a busy night. Styles didn’t rush us. He asked lots of questions, wrote down the answers. He was sympathetic, low-key. I appreciated his manner.
I hope I don’t get mugged again in the neighborhood. If I do, and if Styles is on patrol again, I hope to have more useful information for him next time.
Wow, Paul, thank God the three of you are okay. I hope these kids get caught before they hurt someone else or themselves.