Oh tibhdethzk
no no no no no no! Don’t tell me a male offered a teenage female a RIDE? That is SO SCARY! Thank goodness the police are ON THIS! How incredibly…suspicious! A reader sends us this report:
INCIDENT: Suspicious Activity
DATE / TIME: 03/12/2014 @ 1835 Hours
LOCATION: Davol Road, Cloverfields, Stevensville
NARRATIVE: A teenage female reported she was walking on Davol Road when a small silver vehicle pulled up near her. The driver described as an older white male almost bald and with a moustache asked her “Sweetie do you want a ride.†The female said no and ran to a friend’s house. The vehicle then drove north on Davol.
It was reported that the man did not offer her an incentive to enter the vehicle, made no physical movement towards her and did not follow her.
Deputies searched the area but were unable to locate the vehicle / driver.
CASE: 14-07551
Lenore here:Â I sure am glad the police tried to locate the driver, because he sure is one menacing dude! Offering a ride and then driving away? Yiiiiiikes! – L.
A MAN in a CAR? Terrifying!
Well, I can understand why something like this might seem a little bit suspicious. An adult male who, by the description, sounded like he might be much older than the teenage girl and who was a complete stranger to the girl, asking her if she’d like a ride. I would never do that. BUT, she utilized free-range mentality and refused the ride. Good for her! But as strange as this situation is, I really don’t think it merits the police putting out an APB on this person. He may be a perfectly nice person with no ill intentions but just a bit naive. Or perhaps the guy was a foreigner who had not lived in this country very long. That would make sense because the “stranger danger” mentality is not as prevalent in foreign countries like it is here in America. So the guy then probably didn’t realize he was doing anything wrong, assuming he was a foreigner.
John… even though you sort of are supporting a free range mentality, it saddens me.
“So the guy then probably didn’t realize he was doing anything wrong”
Um… he WASN’T doing anything wrong. Barring any evidence to the contrary, he was being kind and neighborly by offering someone who was walking down the road a ride if she needed/wanted it. She declined the offer and he drove on.
Why is that considered “doing something wrong”?
Reminds me of a “child abduction” scare we had around here about a year ago. A mother reported to the police that a man in a white van had approached her daughter and offered a ride, which the daughter declined. The police issued a statement asking that anyone with information contact them and that any other incidents should also be reported; in the next few days, a half-dozen additional reports were made.
A week later, the newspaper carried a followup: the girl in the original report was a high-school senior while the man was a college sophomore, and the subsequent reports were elementary- and middle-school students making things up to get attention.
Honestly, as a fully grown adult man, I’d be side-eyeing any random stranger who offered me a ride pretty hard. Not because they might be dangerous, but because it’s odd. You don’t know me. You don’t know where I’m going. You don’t know when I might need to get there. Why are you offering me a ride? For all you know I’m bored and wandering around to kill time. It’s just not something that would even occur to most people.
I think John means “anything wrong,” by this country’s warped standards. Perhaps his comment was a bit tongue-in-cheek? That said, if I were in this young woman’s shoes, I would’ve felt a bit nervous too. But I probably wouldn’t have informed the police!
I’ve been accused of “kidnapping” 2x.
1 – I was driving home from HS and my cousin was walking home from the JH. As I came up on him the sky split open with a lighting flash and jolt of thunder. I pulled a U Turn and popped the door open and he dove in. Then I calmly turned around and drove home. His family lived across the street from our little street. I drove him home. Only to find his mother hopping mad. Neighbor had called her and reported cousin kidnapped. I went home, told my Mom what happened and that Donna was mad. She told me to get in the hall and do my homework. When they called to complain my Dad let them have it. The storm had been deadly with tornadoes taking out houses. We had lost power because of lighting striking a transformer down the street. Dad told them I the only way I would have been in trouble is if I had left anyone standing on the side of a road in a storm like that.
The 2nd time was much like the first, but a different cousin. Passed my cousin with storm threatening. He got in my car. I took him home – was greeted by him Mom – laughing so hard she could barely breathe – Multiple calls from neighbors about cousin jumping in my car. She insisted I park in their carport and wait out the storm – since it was a soft top convertible and golf size hail was headed our way. Also the streets between their house and mine were known for street flooding.
This is fairly common. I used to walk a lot back in my young 20s and I got stopped and asked if I wanted a ride all the time. It was in a non pedestrian area so seeing someone walking was out of place. Yes, most of the people that would ask if I wanted a ride were men and I think they were trying to pick up a pretty lady. But that does not mean they are murderers. Obviously I did not accept a ride from a strange man but nothing to call the cops about.
Only time it got weird was when a young guy asked me if I wanted a ride and I said “No thanks” then we drove off turned around and came back and asked again and when I again said “No thanks” he said “I promise I am not a creep” Yeah that really reassures me weirdo! Sounds like something a creep would say.
People had a hard time accepting I was walking because I liked fresh air and exercise!
SOA brings up the point I also wanted to make: it’s not just that the pedestrian assumes anyone offering a ride must be evil, the other weird thing (to me) here is that drivers assume that anyone walking must be in some kind of trouble / needing help.
Personally I wouldn’t take a ride from a stranger either. But I have offered and given a guy my age a ride on my bikerack to help him catch the train (he was running and panting, no way he would’ve made it) 🙂
We had this a few months ago and got alerts from our school district about strangers approaching kids at bus stops asking for directions.
We were sent reminders to please talk to our kids about not talking to strangers and other *safety* alerts. One involved a man who said he was a substitute teacher and wanted to know where the school as. Turns out, he WAS a substitute teacher and the kids ran away to get their parents to call police. The other was a service technician in a white van who made the mistake of getting lost and asking for directions in his creeper van.
Can you imagine if the man you reported to police was your substitute that day?
“Sweetie do you want a ride” ??
Um, no. I’ve been on this earth long enough to know that when a man of a certain age asks thiskind of queston is pretty suspicious. Honestly I’m very surprised that some people find absolutely nothing wrong with it.
I’m all for free-range, but I would fear for a teenage girl if she was approached in this way.
Heck, I would be a bit scared myself, although I must admit that after I reached a certain age, strangers won’t stop their cars and offer me rides anymore.
Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! I was ALMOST kidnapped last spring! (Not.)
I was walking down the road, getting my exercise for the morning. I was carrying my tablet in a backpack to record my walk (miles, etc.) When what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a man (no reindeer) in a white pick up truck. He stopped and asked me if I needed a ride to the public bus stop (2.5 miles away.) I thanked, him and told him no, I was out for my exercise. He thought I was a student because of the backpack. (Nice, at my age to be thought younger!)
So what happened after all of this? Did I call the cops? No, I just kept on walking, and when we see each other in the mornings, him on his way to work, me getting my exercise, we wave at each other.
Also? Weather.com shows it was raining in Stevensville on March 12th, early evening. From the map this looks like a small community on Chesapeake Bay. Some old guy thought he was being neighborly stopping to pick up a young lady walking in the (imminent) rain.
Tonight
Mar 12
Showers / Wind Early 61°F
Observed High
2:05 pm
27°F
Showers / Wind Early
CHANCE OF RAIN:
40%
WIND:
WNW at 37 mph
Diana, you are totally right. I lived a bit north of there when I was in high school and college. Everyone knows everyone, except the foreigners. (The new people.) And I suspect that this “older bald guy” actually knows this girl, where she lives and who her parents are. This guy is in no way a perv, he is a neighbor. Doing what the good neighbors do. And they say “Sweetie” there the way that people in Baltimore say “Hun.” As in, “Would you like mayo on your sandwhich, Hun?” or, “Do you need a ride, Hun?”
John, (the first commenter) this guy is not naive. He likely knows this girl, even if she doesn’t know him. This is a largely close knit area (traditionally, lots of new people moving in lately) where they all know everyone’s business. He is most certainly not a foreigner, though it is likely that the girl is by community standards. Natives have lived there for generations and know all the family lines, and love watching the birth announcements for new extended family members. He knows when new families move in, knows their names, and where they work and probably what the dog’s name is. It is just that type of area.
@one mom, why do you fear for the girl? In this case, when she declined, the guy drove away and left her alone. What danger or harm was there?
Is it possible that this guy was coming on to her? That some other guy saying the same thing would be? Sure, because men sometimes hit on women. And, it’s not always super-easy to tell how old somebody is, so once you are post-pubescent, you may have guys significantly older than you hitting on you.
It’s still not danger, as long as those men are willing to take no for an answer, as this man was. We’re talking about teen girls, not small children.
I was a very, very old looking teen. At 13, I looked about 18. By 14 or 15, I could easily pass for a college student. Older guys, sometimes MUCH older (like, my dad’s age), routinely hit on me, especially since I worked first taking IDs at a community pool and then as a waitress. Men don’t generally check ID before finding somebody attractive, so I never thought they were weird or scary or pedophiles, since thankfully everybody was always respectful when I politely rebuffed advances. Teen girls ARE capable of that. If they choose to give in to the advances of an older guy, I think that’s equally on them as it is on the guy.
So, in this case, when we’re talking about a man simply offering a ride and then taking no for an answer, I don’t see any danger, even if he does mean it as an advance, and would continue to take no for an answer. The only teen girls he’d pose a danger to would be those who’d say yes to sex with an older guy, and if that’s the case, she will find trouble no matter what. We need to start expecting more from teen girls, instead of thinking they are all so weak and stupid that they can’t say no to sex with some middle-aged bald guy (which, I can assure you, is EASY for nearly all teen girls to say no to).
I also don’t really get how we make these distinctions about who’s “creepy” or dangerous and who isn’t. I mean, as far as I can tell, people might think that a 50-something guy who hits on a woman (or offers a ride to a woman) who is 19 or 20 is kind of gross, but wouldn’t assume he was dangerous. But, they’d consider a 28-year-old guy hitting on or offering a ride to a teen who is 15 or 16 to be so. Even thought, really, in both cases the guy probably has no idea how old the young woman is. Despite popular belief, it’s not that easy to distinguish between 15 and 19. I know 15 year old who could pass for 22 (I was one of them) and I have students who are 20 who you would swear are 14. Unless we start expecting men to walk around carding women before being attracted to them, we really can’t expect men to be able to make fine distinctions in the age of post-pubescent women. If we hold up 18-20 year olds as the epitome of female beauty, of course many men are going to find many 15-17 year olds attractive, because many of those young women are going to look no different than 18-20 year olds.
Which is to say, I’m not sure that a culture that thinks it’s totally find to use 18 and 19 year olds models in all of its porn and movies and advertisements has any right to chastise men for being “perverts” for finding young women a couple of years younger than that attractive, when in many cases there will be little to no physical difference. So even if this guy was hitting on her, as long as he’s willing to take no for an answer, immediately, who cares?
Yes of course, the use of the word Sweetie just proves he is a creep.
Or as he was described as an older white male, we could assume that is just what he called her, not knowing her name. The use of Sweetie is quite common from older males.
This is called be hit on by an older creep and at least back then most teenagers deal with it with icy stares and later telling friends “ew this bald loser was like hey sweetie do you want a ride? And I was like I am so
Sorry hit “done” too soon. Meant to say there is no reason to go to police!
If this is an attempted abduction, does a man commit an attempted rape if he offers to buy me a drink at a bar? After all he MAY be intending to slip something it and take me out the back rather than just being friendly. Is it an attempted gang rape if he is with several friends?
I was offered a ride almost every single time I walked somewhere in A. Samoa. Frequently accepted. Gave a few strangers rides too. Guess we should all be arrested since offering a ride is a crime now.
When I was about twenty-four I was walking home during the late afternoon, high-traffic time of day, for a few miles after having dropped my car off for repair. Two or three male drivers slowed way down to ask if I needed a lift. I said “no thanks”, and they moed on. After a while I noticed that one of those men, who had been driving an large, light-colored older model vehicle, drove past me again and again. Soon it was dusk and the traffic was heavy, and I saw a person walking toward me on the sidewalk. A young man was approaching me and he called out in a very friendly manner asking if he could walk with me. It was in that moment that I saw that large, light-colored car parked in a parking lot just ahead. I was able to immediately cross to the center median of the four lane road, and in a very forceful and loud voice told him NO and something to the effect that he will STAY AWAY from me. He immediately went to his car, and in a few moments, as I saw his car entering the roadway to cross over just in front of me (still on the median), and I then crossed back to the side of the road I had been walking on–opposite of where he was now heading. He loudly squealed his tires, since he was driving too fast as he made the hard left turn, and he screamed out of the window, “I’M GOING TO F*** THE SHIT OUT OF YOU!!” After walking for a minute or two I decided to hide in some bushes aong the roadway (it was now dark), and I waited for who knows how long until I finished walking home.
The fact that people (men) are accused of being creeps, or worse, accused of attempted kidnapping is a huge part of why so many people feel “things are different now.”
Men either hesitate to offer help or don’t offer help. I just had a conversation with another mom who proudly described how she YELLED at a man who offerered his hand for balance to her daughter who was walking on a snow/ice bank in NYC. To be fair, she said he offered and her daughter said “no” (age 12) and he offered again, trying to convince her again, and she was getting uncomfortable.
But I adked if there were a bunch of people around….YES. I tried to say maybe he was acctually trying to help. That what makes kids safer is people looking out for them. She added (admitted?) That when yelled at by the mom, he actually said, “this is what is wrong today, let your kid fall in the ice into the street then.”
Same mom/conversation said HER mother told her she shouldn’t talk to babies/toddlers with their parents at the airport…WHY? It undermines parents teaching kids not to talk to strangers.
I know she thinks I am crazy for letting my kids walk and take bus/subway in NYC. I told her I encouraged them to talk to the dry cleaner, subway elevator operator, guy who sweeps in front of the supmarket, etc when they were with me when they were little (walking our dog etc) and thses people KNOW my kids.they ask about them when they see me (“Hey, where’s Josh? He’s so tall…”).
.
And I’m NOT saying the girl should have gotten in the car…
It’s just the perception that the driver MUST be evil. I still think about my dad (hes only 66) hitch hiking from MA to NYC. I know in my lifetime he took rides when our lemon of a car broke down. Granted, hes a big guy, but then only the big guys get help?
This happened in our town as well, just a couple of weeks ago. Same scenario, same lack of kidnapping, same “oh thank goodness she got away”. When I commented on the news facebook page that the only thing the man was actually guilty of was being male I was blasted away.
Cops are still “on the lookout”.
Oh, and this just a couple of weeks after the little girl was found frozen to death outside. I wonder if any men saw her struggling and were afraid to help?
(The little girl’s cousin is being investigated for that, by the way, not the mom who was originally tried, convicted and hung from the nearest tree in the court of public opinion.http://kstp.com/news/stories/S3362652.shtml?cat=1)
One of my biggest interrogation: what would the police do if they find him? Tell him not to do that again? Check his records? It just makes no sense to me. They can’t do anything against him (hopefully).
Not about rides but about fearing strangers…
We are vacationing in San Francisco. Yesterday my daughter and I went off the beaten tourist track to the Seward Street Slides. A group of local teens showed up with cameras (they were working on a school project). They gave my daughter some of their wax paper (much better than the cardboard she was using) and one boy raced her repeatedly down the slides. I am sure that she ended up in much of their footage and may make an appearance in their school project. She had a blast.
It does make me feel sad for paranoid people and their kids. Strangers can be great fun. My daughter would have missed out on a fabulous afternoon if I had taught her to never talk to strangers or if I worried about strange teenage boys (one photographer was a girl and one a boy) having pictures of my daughter and left when the cameras showed up.
I think it is not the asking once that is creepy or rude. It is the continued asking after you say “No thank you” or the getting mad when they say “No thank you” that makes you a creep. That is what sets off my personal creep radar. A gentleman takes “No” for an answer with grace and moves on.
I emailed this report to Lenore because I thought it was ridiculous. It was *cold* that day, and very, very windy. The guy was probably just trying to be nice, wondering why a girl was walking on such a cold day.
I had someone offer me a ride not too long ago..I was out on our rural road getting some exercise, and it was threatening rain. An older man slowed down and asked if I wanted a ride. Was I freaked out? No. I smiled and thanked him but told him I was getting exercise. No big deal.
We have to stop assuming everyone with a penis is a predator and just waiting for the opportunity to molest someone.
I was wrong about it being the super cold day, but it was starting to get windy as a cold front came through. Still…
Hang on, isn’t Cloverfields where that giant insectoid life form wreaked havoc left, right and centre? And they worry about people offering lifts to each other? Haven’t they got….hmmmm….bigger concerns 🙂
Just this past week there was a “attempted abduction” story circulating in our area. I saw friend after friend repost it on facebook, adding comments about how scary it was and how no place is safe anymore. The “story” consisted of a child walking to the bus stop when a vehicle with two men in it yelled out the window to offer the child candy. The child went back home and told his/her parents. This was the entire extent of the story, yet the headline was “attempted abduction” instead of “smart kid walks home instead of accepting candy from a stranger.” The story even referred to the child as the victim! I was outraged, what on earth was this child a victim of!! This child did exactly the correct thing and nothing remotely bad happened to him/her yet they are referred to as “the victim”. My guess is it was two idiots being stupid and seeing what would happen if they offered a kid candy, kind of a dumb bet or something!
That is awful! Imagine the poor man finding out he’d been suspected of something heinous? That would put him off every offering his help again, and that is the real tragedy. Trust lost and a less helpful society.
I will be writing a post on hitch-hiking soon as I have a lot of experience of it and pick people up and hitch even with my child.
Will you add me to your blogroll? You are in my link list.
I a the mother of a free range kid and proud of it 🙂
“If this is an attempted abduction, does a man commit an attempted rape if he offers to buy me a drink at a bar? After all he MAY be intending to slip something it and take me out the back rather than just being friendly. Is it an attempted gang rape if he is with several friends? ”
That’s an ongoing craze here. “Party rape drugs” being slipped into women’s drinks by strangers at bars who then sexually abuse them there and then in front of the clients with nobody remembering afterwards (and therefore it must be true).
“Oh, and this just a couple of weeks after the little girl was found frozen to death outside. I wonder if any men saw her struggling and were afraid to help?”
wouldn’t surprise me.
And afraid to even call 911 when noticing the girl in trouble for fear they’ll be associated and blamed for the event.
“One of my biggest interrogation: what would the police do if they find him? Tell him not to do that again? Check his records? It just makes no sense to me. They can’t do anything against him (hopefully).”
publish his name and address all over the papers where it’s picked up by vigilante anti-pedophile groups who do the dirty work of making like impossible for him until he kills himself.
“That is awful! Imagine the poor man finding out he’d been suspected of something heinous? That would put him off every offering his help again, and that is the real tragedy. Trust lost and a less helpful society. ”
That’s the whole point. The very intent is to create a society in which nobody trusts anyone else, snitches on everyone else, and keeps their mouths shut if the police show up with a SWAT team and break down the neighbours’ door to arrest them because “they must have done something wrong, they always were a bit weird”.
Let’s face it. Men are screwed no matter what. We stop to help and we are perverts, we don’t stop to help and we are jerks.
I encourage all men to do the right thing and lend assistance whenever, wherever, however and with whoever it is needed. Do not worry about how it will appear, just do the right thing.
When the police track you down to question why you decided to help, don’t say a word. Give them two phone numbers. Your lawyers and the local news station that you will be giving your story to should they treat you like a criminal for helping.
“Same mom/conversation said HER mother told her she shouldn’t talk to babies/toddlers with their parents at the airport…WHY? It undermines parents teaching kids not to talk to strangers.”
No, no, no! Please, please, please, engage my child, distract him, talk to him and play with him. Traveling on my own to a funeral with a very mobile 9-month-old through a crazy airport with a much too long layover, I’m eternally grateful to the two gentlemen who played with my son while we waited for our plane and gave me a much needed break. The younger one even held my son and bounced him on his knee. So thanks again, and keep on keeping on. Not all mothers are irrational worst-first thinkers.
@ Jessica -absolutely, just couldn’t get they across to this mom…so sad!
When I was about ten or so I was playing alone at my school playground and I started noticing one particular red car go by several times.It was starting to bother me so i waited till it passed by again, jumped off the monkey bars and headed the opposite direction. I walked the few blocks home and mentioned it to my mom. I was told I was being silly (my mother was a strange sort of helicopter parent) and that I was blowing things out of proportion.
Honestly I could have been wrong. Maybe it was a different car, maybe it wasn’t, but I was able to trust my gut. I didn’t freak out, police weren’t called and I wasn’t a victim of any kind.
I”m a 50 yr. old male. I’d NEVER invite a girl for a ride even if she was freezing.
ifsogirl: Well Warren would tell you you were a paranoid child. I am not of the mentality that you should just throw caution to the wind and do whatever you want and nothing bad will ever happen to you. My Dad is like that and he has been almost killed a couple times including being stabbed.
I think there is a happy medium. Like go and send your kid out to play alone but also teach them stuff to look out for like you did with if you notice something suspicious or your gut instinct tells you something is up, you don’t have to talk yourself out of feeling nervous. You probably should listen to yourself and get out of there.
I live my life like that which means I pretty much get to do whatever I want and don’t miss much, but at the same time nothing has ever happened tragic or bad to me because I use my head.
I think kids are smart enough once they get to a certain age to handle that stuff on their own and make the smart decisions. Or at least most kids can.
OH Dolly shut the hell up. Has there been any sort of event that your family hasn’t had. Dad almost killed, home invasions yadayadayada.
You really should get some help. Just over the last month your mental and emotional state has severely declined.
Warren: Oh I was unaware you have a psychology degree? Oh wait, all you have is a high school diploma. Oops.
A few years back I was walking home by myself in the wee hours of the morning. As I was nearing home, a man pulled up his car beside me and asked if I was okay and needed a lift anywhere.
Now, there are two main options.
Either he was a creeper with nefarious plans targeting an alone girl who looked maybe 18 or 19 (I forgot to look my age for a while there)
OR he was a nice person who was genuinely concerned about the 18 or 19 year old walking home by herself in the middle of the night.
It could have been either, I don’t know. I like to think it was the second though.
Poor Misguided Dolly. Why do you insist on believing that graduating high school, taking up a career, building my own business is an insult?
I really get a kick out morons like you. Being in our industry and the responsibilities that go along with it is good honest work. You should actually learn more about things before you dismiss them. Because one day down the road you life actually may be in the hands of someone doing exactly what me and my guys do.
And if you are an example of what may happen to someone’s mental state after going to college………fuck me I am glad I do what I do. You are one certifiable whack job.
I love how you get so defensive about it. That is the only reason I keep going there. Because it obviously bothers you. If you call me crazy, I can keep calling you uneducated because I can tell that is a weak spot in your psyche.
Dolly,
Listen I know you are working from a point of weakness. I understand that. You have to deal with the limited backwoods intellect that you have been given.
So here is a lesson for you. Do not confuse bragging with being defensive. A person of your obvious mental and emotional handicap cannot make someone their complete superior defensive.
When you wake up and realize how truly mentally and emotionally stunted you are, your life will become so much better. Acceptance is the first step to overcoming your problems, Dolly. And as irritating as you are, I do hope you get better.
Although I can understand being wary of a stranger who offers you a ride — I certainly would be — I don’t understand calling the police. After all, it’s not illegal (as far as I know) to offer to give someone a lift, so what were the police going to do if they found this driver? Arrest him? Kill him?
I think this falls under the category of Stuff Your Parents Should Have Warned You About. It’s not necessarily dangerous for a stranger to offer you a ride, but it’s usually not a good idea to accept it.
@taradlion That’s sad, isn’t it? This winter with all the snow and ice piles we had along the sidewalks, there is no way I would have been able to cross the street to the train station without falling were it not for some nice men holding out their hands for me. I thanked them and we parted ways – end of story. Why freak out about it? It’s not like we live in some strict Islamic country where touching hands is no better than having wild sex…
I honestly don’t get why the default assumption about offered rides is that they are bad. I’ve always accepted rides from people who offered, even random people who stop in a car and not once has anything bad happened. They never came to my house later or anything, no one said anything weird or came on to me or anything. I just had some nice conversations with some strangers (OMG!) and saved myself the walk.
Y’know, when I was a kid I had a long walk home from school. I used to hope that someone would stop and offer me a ride. I never happened, but it would have been nice. When I was in college, I was driving home one day and my tire blew out on the highway. Thank goodness a very nice man in a mini-van stopped and offered me a ride to the nearest gas station. I stood there for a minute debating whether or not I should get into the vehicle. When I noticed he was missing a leg I figured I could out-run him if need be. I hate that I felt the need to evaluate him like that, but I also trusted my instincts and my ability to evaluate a situation. And it all turned out fine. He dropped me at the nearest gas station where I called AAA and all was well. I might still be sitting on the side of I-25 today if I had run screaming from a man who was genuinely trying to help me.