Mother and daughter abducted from shopping centre carpark, forced to buy laptops
Mother and daughter abducted from shopping centre carpark, forced to buy laptops
A mother says a man armed with a knife told her to "just stop crying" as he forced her to drive and buy laptops in Melbourne's south-east while her six-month-old daughter sat in the back seat.
what thw actual fuck. that's some 'innocent civilian caught up in sci fi series shenanigans' shit.
So insane at first I thought it was an onion article. Seems like an isolated event why someone would require laptops? A cyber security nutjob?
I got worried as my best friend shops there with his family and let him know what had happened there just incase.
The whole thing is terrifying.
Makes me wonder what would have happened if she wasn’t able to purchase the laptops.
@Duenan @Taleya "A mother says a man armed with a knife told her to 'just stop crying' as he forced her to drive and buy laptops in Melbourne's south-east while her six-month-old daughter sat in the back seat.
...
"Police say the victim was getting out of her car at the Stud Park Shopping Centre [in Rowville] last Friday night when she was confronted by a man who threatened her with a knife and forced her back into the driver's seat of her Suzuki S Cross."
There was a thread on here about someone considering moving to Rowville?
Yeah, here's a good example of why that's a bad idea...
He remained in the car with her child while she was forced to make the purchases.
This is the bit I don't understand. How could he know she wouldn't involve police the moment he let her out of sight? I know there's the threat to the baby, but the risk he took there is unbelievable.
We are not talking about a criminal mastermind here.
It is was a high-risk, low return heist. She could have called the police, liberated her baby, had the stores brick the laptops on purpose and he would have gotten nothing.
The way it was, he (as so far) managed to get away with hot, easily traceable goods and she has suffered a financial loss and serious trauma. No one will win in the long term.
If she involved the police, they would need to be discrete. Flashing lights and uniformed cops end with her child dead, so presumably they'd need plain clothes officers who I assume are not readily available for emergency response. I doubt vicpol would risk a murdered baby due to their incompetence, so it would be a slower response.
It takes what, 10 or 15 minutes to buy a laptop? I'm guessing that even if she called the cops, chances are he's long gone before they turn up.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A mother says a man armed with a knife told her to "just stop crying" as he forced her to drive and buy laptops in Melbourne's south-east while her six-month-old daughter sat in the back seat.
In a detailed statement to the media, the mother spoke of the "abhorrent" encounter, where her attacker promised her he would not take her child and apologised for ruining her night before letting her free.
Police say the victim was getting out of her car at the Stud Park Shopping Centre last Friday night when she was confronted by a man who threatened her with a knife and forced her back into the driver's seat of her Suzuki S Cross.
Kieren said the man sat in the back seat of the car with her daughter and forced her to drive to several electrical stores nearby.
The man told her to drive to stores on the South Gippsland Highway in Cranbourne and Frankston-Dandenong Road in Dandenong, where he demanded she buy laptop computers.
"We're also appealing to anyone who may have driven cars and have dash cam footage of that area between about 5:20pm and about 6:30pm which may have captured this male in the lead up to the incident," Senior Constable Minehan said.
The original article contains 1,038 words, the summary contains 208 words. Saved 80%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Eh, it's not unique to us
John Matrix is just trying to save his daughter