On my walk home this evening from work, I was talking to an old college friend for an upcoming trip. While walking west on Pratt Street, I approached the intersection of Pratt Street and South Street near the Baltimore Renaissance Hotel and the Gallery. Three black youths were approaching in the opposite direction, and I was well to their left. All three approached my side of the intersection, but the small one in the lead did not continue on his path. Instead, he sort of sidled up next to me.
I was aware of this, and as I turned my head to ask the punk what the Hell he thought he was doing, he snatched my cell phone from my hand against my ear. He immediately took off running east on Pratt Street, and I turned and tripped over my feet while trying to wheel around and pursue. At first, the kid started to run out and across Pratt Street, but he then cut back onto Pratt and then turned northward onto Gay Street. I kept going, and I chased the kid as he made a left north on Gay Street.
I lost him as he made the turn up Gay Street, as I was a step behind him on account of an attempt to flag down an apparently oblivious Maryland Transit Authority cruiser parked across the street at the World Trade Center. As I rounded the corner and saw traffic stopped on Lombard Street I slowed my pace as I noticed my shoe was untied. I went up to the corner to take a look to see if I could see the punk, but he was not in sight.
I took a quick peek around to see if I saw his friends–one of which I recall saying as his friend took off with my phone with me in pursuit “What happened, yo.” There was no sign of them. I headed home, deciding to not wait out for the police and wanting to cancel my phone service and merely file a report.
I filed the report, and I had Verizon turn my phone service back on in an attempt to trace the phone. I had a nice chat with a Sergeant about tonight’s events, and I was escorted to and from Central by a Southern District police officer.
I am unharmed, but incredibly annoyed at the inconvenience of it all. Moreover, the more annoying part of this whole turn of events was silently predicting this happening as the kid approached me. In the end, I need to deal with the unexpected annoyance of replacing a phone, as I doubt the phone will turn up. Nonetheless, I will give it a couple of days before checking in with the Detective and suspending my phone service. There is a bright side–at least I am done with my crappy RAZR2.
Dude, you’ve been watching too much 24! A foot chase?! I give you credit for trying to stop them, but luckily you didn’t get hurt. I’m sorry you had to go through that, but it could have been a lot worse.
@Adam: The only thing wounded this time was my pride. I was disappointed I couldn’t keep up, but my initial stumble out of the blocks hurt my cause.
I so don’t get why people do things like that… I mean, the expensive part of having a cell phone is the service, not getting the phone. And shouldn’t criminals know by now that phones broadcast their identity to the network in order to connect?
Still, makes marginally more sense than knifing people’s tires because they have a car and you don’t.
Hopefully, they do something stupid, such as http://tinyurl.com/9fe9qv
Can you enable to GPS “find me I’ve fallen in a manhole” feature and have the cops lojack his butt?
I feel your pain. 3 days after moving into our new house a few years back and someone jacked into my old acura and boosted the cd player. $100 stereo and hopefully he got slapped by his drug dealer for that one.
Maybe it was a kid working for Marlo Stanfield.
@jwer: It was entertaining. The strange part of the whole event was my actually predicting something happening. What the hell? Do I have Spidey-Sense?
@R.O.B.: Our criminals are pretty dumb. As I was making my statement last night, the Sergeant I spoke to told me about the four suspects he had arrested based on their use of a stolen cell phone.
@Chris: Yeah. I really thought it would have been funner to have him steal my work CrackBerry.
@Adam: I really should become like Omar and exact my own personal vendetta.
This is why we need phones with built in incendiary failsafes. You lose a phone, but they lose an hand, ear, or both!
Jeez, JJT — glad to know you’re okay!!
@Evan: I like that idea. Total destruction of offender. Awesome.
@Carol: It’s just a phone. I’m back to the old trusty e815 until I get a new phone.
Have you decided on what phone you are getting yet?
@Paul: Not yet. I like the Android OS, but I dislike the formfactor of the G1. I have played with a coworker’s, and I like it. I am just non-plussed by T-Mobile’s service.
I am intrigued by the iPhone, if only to JailBreak it and run all sorts of other stuff on it. I am also intrigued by the Storm–mainly because it’s on Verizon’s network, which I like.
My issue is if I go to another carrier, will they offer me an incentive to get out of my current contract. That’s probably one reason why I may stay with VZW.
As far as new cell phone service goes, how about Boost Mobile
?