Armed bystander intervenes

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gspn

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This happened a few nights ago. A woman is leaving a store, when she tries to enter her vehicle, three perps that are parked next to her try to kidnap her and leave with her and the vehicle. An armed bystander heard her screams, intervened, and saved her from a terrible situation.

There's a video at the top of the story. Thought it might be interesting for some to review. Perps drove off, haven't been found.

https://www.localmemphis.com/articl...ssee/522-f762cb56-e7ae-4ad2-9ca7-225e6b87a8fb
 
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Wow, 8PM in a grocery store parking lot--not exactly what most people would consider a dangerous time or location.

Glad the guy was paying attention--that was a really nasty situation.
 
JohnKSa said:
Wow, 8PM in a grocery store parking lot--not exactly what most people would consider a dangerous time or location.
Click to expand...

Is a grocery store parking lot ever not a transitional space?

Colorado Springs recently passed a city ordinance that property owners must give you at least 24-hour notice before they tow your car. If the car moves in the 24 hours the clock starts over again. As a result homeless people are living in strip mall parking lots.

No one has reported a specific correlation between that and rising crime rates but you'd be foolish not to take it into account.

I've said this before but that's one of the reasons I try to park in an empty part of the parking and since someone was nice enough to hit the front end of my car hard enough to crack the radiator I try to park nose in to a light pole.
 
Is a grocery store parking lot ever not a transitional space?
Click to expand...
Any parking lot is. The thing is, most people don't associate grocery stores so much with crime as convenience stores or bars, or maybe even a low end department store like a Dollar General. And 8PM is within the normal timeframe that normal working folks would still be out and about running errands, etc. I'm certainly not saying that that time and place is safe against crime, but it's just not what the typical person conjures up in their mind when they think about crime.
 
Pick and choose vehicle parking spots carefully, too.
I arrange my truck such that I just drive forward.
If something looks peculiar…return back to store.
 
JohnKSa said:
Any parking lot is. The thing is, most people don't associate grocery stores so much with crime as convenience stores or bars, or maybe even a low end department store like a dollar general. And 8PM is within the normal timeframe that normal working folks would still be out and about running errands, etc. I'm certainly not saying that that time and place is safe against crime, but it's just not what the typical person conjures up in their mind when they think about crime.
Click to expand...
This new generation of jackers dosent seem to care if its a good place or not. Wearing masks no longer looks out of place.
 
JohnKSa said:
Any parking lot is. The thing is, most people don't associate grocery stores so much with crime as convenience stores or bars, or maybe even a low end department store like a dollar general. And 8PM is within the normal timeframe that normal working folks would still be out and about running errands, etc. I'm certainly not saying that that time and place is safe against crime, but it's just not what the typical person conjures up in their mind when they think about crime.
Click to expand...

I guess I ain't the typical person
 
I guess I ain't the typical person
Click to expand...
Interesting. I carry at the grocery store (I carry anywhere it's legal) and I pay attention to what's going on around me there (I pay attention to what's going on around me anywhere I go), but I've never thought about the grocery store as a focus point for crime. Obviously crime can happen anywhere and any time, and (as I said on another thread) it's important to be open to the idea that it CAN happen anywhere or anytime so you don't have waste time aligning your mindset with reality if you are targeted.

All that aside, I just don't think of the grocery store parking lot as a being a high crime area. Thinking back about self-defense and police activity videos, grocery stores seem under-represented when you think of how often people visit them.
 
The nice thing about Kroger is they have, historically, been friendly to the 2A. I see people open carrying in my local Kroger from time to time and I always CC while I shop there. The parking lots are always kind of dicey though, at least in my neck of the woods. I like to practice situational awareness as I'm coming and going from the store. I scan for the oddballs and try to locate them before they locate me (and come up to me asking for money for drugs). This video however illustrates how sneaky the real troublemakers are. They were hiding out in their car parked next to her, avoiding detection and waiting to ambush. They're pretty cunning. And I'll definitely modify my situational awareness game after having watched this. Gotta scan for oddballs sitting in their cars too. She got really lucky though. Most people would have ended up becoming a statistic in that situation.
 
redcon1 said:
The nice thing about Kroger is they have, historically, been friendly to the 2A. I see people open carrying in my local Kroger from time to time and I always CC while I shop there. The parking lots are always kind of dicey though, at least in my neck of the woods. I like to practice situational awareness as I'm coming and going from the store. I scan for the oddballs and try to locate them before they locate me (and come up to me asking for money for drugs). This video however illustrates how sneaky the real troublemakers are. They were hiding out in their car parked next to her, avoiding detection and waiting to ambush. They're pretty cunning. And I'll definitely modify my situational awareness game after having watched this. Gotta scan for oddballs sitting in their cars too. She got really lucky though. Most people would have ended up becoming a statistic in that situation.
Click to expand...
Sounds like the Kroger in the town I live in. Gotten worse in the few years. What I have noticed lately is the speed with which the vagrant appears.
 
Tinman357 said:
This Good Samaritan saved that womans life. At the very least he saved her the torment of a gang rape and a lifetime of recovery from the horrors of what would have happened to her...
Click to expand...

Maybe, if they knew her. More likely, they saw a nice car (it was a small Mercedes Benz SUV/Crossover), so they lay in wait. At least around here, it seems (albeit based on how often the news reports it) that most of the time when a person is kidnapped intentionally along with the carjacking (i.e. other than when it is a kid in the back of the car) they are taken in order to drain their bank accounts. The kidnappers drive around with the person for a couple hours taking them from ATM to ATM and having the person take out money to the cash limit at each machine until their accounts are drained. That way, the person has to type in the correct PIN (with the threat being death and/or torture if they don't) and the person isn't free to call the bank to close the cards or call the police about the car. Then, when the bank accounts won't yield any more money, they usually let the person go with no injuries (or sometimes after a beating).
 
In my town a couple of scumbags waited in their car in a grocery store parking lot until an elderly single female got in her car, followed her home, [one block away from my house, a "good" neighborhood] beat the tar out her, she was in her 90's. Luckily neighbor's security cameras caught the licence plate numbers of the bad guys and the police arrested them in the same parking lot from which they followed the elderly lady. They were all set to strike again.
 
The nice thing about Kroger is they have, historically, been friendly to the 2A.
Click to expand...
Sorta. Awhile back, they stopped carrying magazines with firearm content.
https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinn...roger-ends-sale-of-gun-related-magazines.html

They do not restrict carry using legal means, but they do have a policy requesting that only LEOs carry openly in their stores.
https://www.cbsnews.com/dfw/news/kroger-guns-stop-open-carry-grocery-stores/

They have also "called on lawmakers" to strengthen background checks.

They aren't outright anti-2A (they haven't banned carry in their stores, they don't post signs, they haven't called for any firearm bans), but I wouldn't call them friendly to the 2A either.
 
Southerner up North said:
What I have noticed lately is the speed with which the vagrant appears.
Click to expand...

It seems directly related to “support” offered to them. You will never find an old lady with 100 cats that she doesn’t feed and shelter.

The guy holding the cardboard sign at the traffic light wouldn’t be there if money wasn’t handed to him when it turns red.

It’s logical. You wouldn’t keep fishing a pond where you never caught a fish.
 
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