VICTIM EMPOWERMENT

I Turned the Tables on My Stalker, and the Cat Became the Mouse

My stalker thought that he had picked a victim but he was wrong

The car behind me seemed to be following me a little too closely, a little too shadowy. My apartment sat in a quiet area a few blocks off the bar scene in Hillcrest, the gayborhood of San Diego. Once you left the main street to get to my building it was mainly larger apartment and medical buildings, the type of place that has very little action after office hours beyond those who live there. It was common to be the only car on the road for my final three blocks. Conversely, it was quite uncommon to have another car follow closely behind me and shadow my every turn.

He was following me.

My apartment is surrounded by several other buildings. It’s possible that he lived in any one of these buildings and was simply going home. It’s possible that it’s just a pizza delivery guy going to my building. It’s also possible that I am being stalked by someone whose goal is to scare me or worse, to do me harm.

Let’s find out.

As I entered the four-way intersection at the end of my block I stopped my car at a nobody-would-park-like-this angle on one of the four corners and kept my engine on. Anyone who had innocent intentions would simply roll past me and deliver the pizza. But anyone whose intensions were not so innocent would soon lose their position of power as they would no longer be behind me.

He slow-rolled past me and we stared each other down.

And that was all the confirmation that I needed, I had a stalker on my hands. I had no intension of letting my perp know where I lived. I needed him to leave the area before I would park, exit my car, or enter my building. And as I now had seen his car, his license plate and his face, any smart criminal would have just called it game over and gone on to greener pastures. But penitentiaries are not filled with Rhodes Scholars.

So I waited.

How long does it take to make three left turns to go around the block? And as if right on cue there he was, a familiar set of headlights rounding that third turn and slowly creeping back my way. And as he approached the intersection and passed the back of my car we stared each other down again.

And in a flash I was enveloped by nothing short of pure fury.

“Who the fuck does this asshole think he is? He CANNOT do this to me!” I slammed my car into first gear, put the accelerator to the floor and did a full-blown tires-screaming Starsky & Hutch donut in middle of the intersection and then gunned it until I was inches off his bumper. “How do you like me now asshole? Who’s the victim now motherfucker?”

And just like that the cat became the mouse.

It must have been quite a surprise for him, this person who quietly creeps around the shadowy back roads, looking for opportunities, thinking that he’s in control of what’s going to happen. Looking for a pliable victim, someone meek, someone who won’t fight back, someone who will be scared, someone who will roll over and take it. Passing on those he deems to be contenders, who aren’t scared, who will put up a fight, who might take him down. But on this night he misjudged. Of course, it all looked good on paper…a single female alone in a dark and quiet neighborhood.

But that’s where his advantages came to a crashing halt.

This was my hood and I knew every square inch of it, and I’m not having any of this bullshit. And then magically, a sequence of beautiful events took place. Not having the home court advantage, the mouse made two critical mistakes with the cat hot on his back.

• My street had exactly two options. One exit route and one dead end. My perp took a left turn that gave him a one-way ticket to my building’s dead end parking lot.
• The parking lot had a loop that would have given him an option to make an easy exit. Instead he picked yet another wrong turn that took him through a fence opening and onto no less than the the pool deck of my apartment building. And with nothing but a diving board to escape onto our mouse was suddenly out of options. The chase is over my friend.

I angled my car in front of the fence opening thus blocking any hope of his car exiting that pool deck. I got out of my car, slammed the door shut and started circling his car. Furious! I slammed my fists onto his hood while screaming at him. “You CANNOT fucking do this to me you fucking asshole!”

Doors locked. Windows up. Eyes wide open. Oh shit!

“What’s going on?” “Has someone called 911!” “The police are on the way!” As lights of dozens of apartments surrounding the pool started flashing on I screamed at the top of my lungs while pounding on the hood of his car. “Yes! Call the fucking police! This motherfucker is stalking me!”

Doors locked. Windows up. Eyes wide open. Oh shit!

As my rage subsided I retreated to the safety of the shadows of the parking lot and watched as my perp tried desperately to scissor his way past my car. Back and forth, inch by inch, like the caged animal that he was. But that car, that undeniable connection to his stalking, was going nowhere. He could run but the car was staying. And he would then have to explain how his car ended up on the pool deck of an apartment building that he did not live in while the woman who did was screaming bloody murder.

A homeless guy who had moments before been stealing beer bottles from the building’s recycle bin crossed the parking lot and approached me. “I’ll stay with you until the police arrive to make sure that you’re safe.” What I wouldn’t give to be able to turn back the hands of time and hand that guy $100.

And then suddenly the perp got out of his car, opened his trunk, took out a backpack and retreated toward the adjacent street. My homeless hero told me to go to my apartment. He would keep watch until the police arrived and then report what happened. I went inside and waited for the distant sirens to get closer and when I could hear that the cavalry had in fact arrived I went back down and gave my statement to the police.

So what happened?

As was reported by my homeless hero the perp had returned to the scene without the backpack, surely stashing it somewhere in the neighborhood. As no laws were evidently broken my perp would not be charged this night. And although he had a clean record the officer said that this incident would go into the police database and in the event that he offended again there would be evidence of a prior stalking.

What about the backpack?

The backpack was not recovered. I’ll presume that the perp came back at some time and retrieved it. Was it full of drugs? Money? Child porn? Giant dildos? Duct tape and handcuffs? Who knows.

The police officer who took my statement was cautionary about the way that I had handled things. I’m sure that police officers see a lot of bad things that happen and I’m well aware that this one could have gone very differently. I also think that every Ted Bundy in the world starts with a practice run or two and maybe, just maybe Ted Jr. might think twice if the first attempt went down in flames. Was this just some dumb guy with a backpack full of weed that was trying to scare a random girl so he could jerk off about it later? Or something much worse?

In the end I stand by my actions for no other reason than that’s just who I am. I’m not the victim type, I’m more the go-down-swinging type. But I would have done two things differently…

• I would have tailed him to recover that backpack because something in there was dangerous enough in his mind for him to leave the scene yet come back to face the firing squad. And even if he was just some dumbass with a kilo of weed who got 2–3 years in the pokey for being in possession of it during his harmless little cat and mouse game that didn’t go as he’d planned, well cry me a river asshole.
• And I would have given my homeless hero his $100 for being a genuine human being who did the right thing when no one was looking.

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