Crime does not pay! Part One

None of you would admit that you were beaten up by somebody. It’s usually the other way round, the pugilist being the one boasting about having pummelled someone into a pulp. Unless of course if one was trying to solicit sympathy or use the incident as testimony that would drive some point home or to teach a moral lesson of sorts.
As I grew up I must admit that I was often at the business end of some guy’s or even a girl’s fist. Not that I was weak or what others refer to as a wimp. I had this streak of pacifism running through my veins. It took some effort for me to kill a fly. While boys my age dismembered grasshoppers and tortured frogs, I read comics.


So it was difficult for me to understand why others were so sadistic as to be violent to other human beings. If there was a fight, I quickly removed myself from the scene. But during the few occasions that I was helpless to watch, like those ferocious fights in the classroom, I was horrified by how far my classmates could go at each other.

I am convinced that this violent streak in my former classmates had a bearing on their future. Those who were particularly virulent ended up in jail or worse still dead. In fact, the worst of criminals in our neighbourhood were the bullies during our time growing up. Nevertheless, as I was later to discover, avoiding trouble would not prevent me from being a victim.

Some of you might have heard this story, but this time around I have to retell it to offer a different perspective about being a victim. Those of you who grew up in an urban environment know that one of the important skills of survival is to avoid being mugged. Muggings, the most prevalent of crimes, were very much part of the urban landscape.

While the chances of one being mugged are sure to increase with the amount of time spent in an urban setting, one tends to relax into a discernable routine that will attract the attention of known criminals in the neighbourhood. What is shocking is that these invariably are people you are familiar with.

While you are lost in the familiarity of your routine, you are blissfully unaware that someone has been meticulously planning to mug you. This is a chilling discovery for some but a life of criminality and disposition to violence nurtured from those heady days in junior school has blossomed into a full time career. These guys have been so horned in this that to them there is a thin line between assault to course grievous bodily harm and killing someone.

This is why victims of mugging who survive to tell the tale should thank their maker for coming out alive. I have been doing so ever since that fateful day when my life flashed before my eyes at the hands of the most vicious thugs roaming our neighbourhood. What began as another normal day ended tragically for me.

I had used this particular road countless times but as they say, routine dulls one’s sense of security. Who would have imagined that on this very road running between several rows of houses, one that is more than well lit, and is the main thoroughfare to a bustling housing estate would be the site of an ambush?

However, one should have never lost sight of the fact that this is dubbed the ‘Wild West’ of the city. It is an area where Murphy’s Law reigns supreme, that is to say, if anything could go wrong here, it would! I of all people, having grown here for the better part of my life, should have known that for a fact.

As it turned out, I it just wasn’t my day. It was early by any standard, but in winter it gets dark quickly in the southern hemisphere. The chill of evening usually forces people indoors though they would hardly be asleep at this time. There was also this deceptive presence of a few ‘people’ moving about at that hour that must have lulled me into a sense of false security.

Here I was, walking from home, disarmed of the alertness very necessary in these parts. Lost in my own thoughts I failed to notice that the street was now deserted. I could vaguely recollect someone following me and even more distantly a rather odd whistling. The muggers had managed to retain one critical advantage over me, the element of surprise.

That I was being discreetly shadowed was lost on me. As I approached a junction that would normally be teeming with vehicles dropping off passengers and vendors plying their trade, my ‘shadow’ was now abreast of me. What perturbed me was how he had managed to get this close without me noticing. He was so uncomfortably close he was right in my space.

Unbeknown to me this was supposed to the decoy. He was short, rather stocky and as the Americans say, butt ugly. I noticed all these things about him because he said one of the most extraordinary things to me.

“Can I pass?” he asked.

How anyone could ask for permission to pass on such a wide road, I wondered out loud.

On hearing my rather surprised comment, he turned round just a couple of metres in front of me. Just then my early warning system otherwise known as instinct, kicked in. Well it kicked in too late as I was to painfully discover.

Noticing my apprehension, the thug became patronising. I should have known there and then that I should be preparing for the worst, or at least glancing at what was behind me. But looking at this pathetic figure in front of me, I thought to myself; what could possibly happen to me? Famous last thoughts, as I was to find out soon enough.

“Pow!” a hard object hit the back of my head with such force that I fell down face first. I could have said that I saw stars but the truth be told, I saw and felt nothing. I turned round to face my executioner, a move I was to regret. A hard object, which I later discovered was a half brick, smashed onto my forehead. Now I knew what a snake felt when its head was being crushed.

The bleeding was immediate and profuse. Feeling faint but nonetheless conscious, I tried to reason with the muggers. Remember that I am the peaceful kind, ready to make amends whenever the opportunity presented itself even when on the verge of certain demise. The fact that was I talking and trying to get up must have perturbed them.

“I have no money on me,” I mumbled as I felt the warm liquid that was blood flowing over my face. To say that I was in a pathetic state is in itself an understatement. Yet in the eyes of these thugs, all six of them, I was a threat because I was supposed to be unconscious or at worst, dead.

To be continued...