Not On My Watch

I’m pretty sure I saved a lady from being kidnapped tonight. I went to the Hoffman Center AMC to see ‘Bug’ (which was freakin’ awesome) and then snuck in to see ‘Spiderman 3′ again. So I was leaving the theater around 12:40 at night. The place was a ghost town and the parking lot was only a third full (with my car sitting alone way in the back). Most of the cars were parked near the theater.

I entered the parking lot and saw a car sitting in the lane between two rows of parked cars. There was a guy standing in the driver side door, the passenger and rear-passenger doors were open too. A woman was leaning out of the rear passenger door. Both people at the car were watching another guy wrestling with a woman between two parked cars.

I looked around and realized we were the only people in the lot. At first I thought they were just playing around but then the woman broke free. She started to desperately run away but got grabbed again. The guy at the driver’s door started his way around the car to join in.

That’s when I yelled, “Are you all right?!”

The guys froze and the woman squirmed and I started walking towards them and repeated, “Are you all right?!”

The woman leaning out of the car said, “yeah we’re fine,” and one of the men let out a menacing chuckle. But the woman being manhandled began to wriggle more violently. So I stopped about 10 feet from the car and said, “you know there’s a cop over there,” or something like that.

Then the woman broke free and ran past me towards the front of the theater (where a cop car is stationed). One of the men started after her but had second thoughts after seeing me standing in his way. So the men jumped in their car and took off.

I confirmed the woman was at the cop car before I went to my car. Then I drove slowly around the lot for a few minutes to make sure they didn’t come back.

Originally published on May 31st, 2007.