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Not as a criminal but as a potential victim?
My lad was asking about kidnapping yesterday (long story) and it reminded me a my near miss when I was about 6 or 7. I had cycled up the road to the post box, it was the furthest I was allowed on my own. A van pulled up and the person in the van asked me for directions to the primary school where they were going to a car boot sale. The side /sliding door then opened and the woman in the back suggested I get in the van to show them the way. Obviously I cycled away as fast as I could, looking back now as an adult I realise how bad that situation was.
The other near miss was not me but my dad, he had shop just down the road from RAF Uxbridge. He came in one morning and found a huge bomb below tarpaulin in his back yard. It had been dumped there ready for IRA to move that evening.
What is your near miss?
I got chatted up in a bar by a Louise one night....
not me personally but my mum was approached by Myra Hindley 'to see some puppys' and Harold Shipman was my dads doctor!
Sailor74 is Kenny senior. 😂
Not me, but the mum of one of my kids classmates was involved (as a victim) in both the IRA bomb at the Arndale in Manchester and the bombing of the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester. She was injured both times, thankfully not seriously.
Nobeerinthefridge
Free Member
Sailor74 is Kenny senior. 😂
😆😆
Again not me personally but my ex-wife was in Harrods about a half an hour before the bomb went off in 1983. She was still in the area at the time of the explosion.
Me and the missus were in the Sari Club and Paddy's bar in Bali the night before the bombings. If we hadn't flown home that day we would have probably been in either one or the other when it happened.
Depends if having the shit kicked out of you is a serious crime. Having grown up in Leigh Park, dodged this a few times. Most memorable was with my younger brother coming back from Southsea Skatepark, we got surrounded by 6 lads intent on doing us damage. A kind fella getting in his car gave them some verbals - “takes 6 of you does it?” and they backed off, amazingly. I took 1 punch from one of them and I threw him in the road, shame the oncoming car missed him, gave us a chance to run away.
Back in '94, a group of staff from the Glegg Arms split between two cars to travel to a football tournament in Manchester. In a last moment change, it was decided I wouldn't travel in Andy's car and Andy set off with his passengers. Next time we saw their car was with Andy dead ~5mins up the road on a lethal crossroads on the A540, with passengers injured but thankfully they all made it.
I don't know if more has happened since, but Andy's mum was still capaigning to get this crossroads made more safe in 2017.
Charlie and I we're in the park, then this man came up and said would I like to see some puppies. I said yes. I was going to go but then Charlie stopped me. Charlie reminded me my mum says I shouldn't go off with people I don't know. Then the man went away. We went and told mummy and she said we'd been very good. I got an apple an Charlie got something he likes.
A van pulled up and the person in the van asked me for directions to the primary school where they were going to a car boot sale. The side /sliding door then opened and the woman in the back suggested I get in the van to show them the way.
That happened to me, very similar situation except it was at night, a car, and looking for a house. I did get in. Thinking they would give me some money. They didn't. Nothing happened.
We were playing in the park as a kid around 10ish with some other kids from the street on summer with, what I thought at the time to be one of the other kid's uncle/relation.
My parent's told me at dinner that night did I know the man and did anything peculiar happen? Turned out he was a known paedophile and had just been arrested.
I took the kittens to be chipped and snipped this week. I was very early, the vets didn't open for another 20 minutes.
So I'm sitting in a car in a side street, with a basket of kittens next to me, seeing a load of schoolchildren file past and thinking "I'm totally going to jail in a minute".
Charlie and I we’re in the park
Well played.
When I was young I had lots of curly hair. One day I was walking my dog to the woods along a busy main road.
A car with 3 men in it pulled up beside me and the front passenger said " oh it's a boy".
I couldn't figure out why they thought a girl would be able to give directions but not me.
I mentioned this to my dad and he did the whole stranger danger thing but only once I
had grownn up did I realise what could have happened.
My doctor when i lived in newton aycliffe was Howard Martin.
Went on trial a few years later accused of murdering several patients.
Thankfully i was never seriously ill when i lived there.
I have a good one about my dad in the 70s in Belfast. He was walking home after seeing my mum which involved going passed a bit of a hotspot. My dad was by himself as a large group were walking towards him. He knew if he crossed the road, they would go after him. He stayed put and the large group of around 20 split as my dad walked down the middle. Genuinely fearing for his life, he heard a voice 'alright Eddie?' My dad quickly replied but kept his head down. The next day in work a colleague came up to him and told him he was in the group and that if he didn't know of my dad, they would have given him a good hiding. A few were armed. The guy didn't know my dad that well, only really by name.
Not a crime but my Dad's best mate from their days in the merchant navy stayed on ships after they left and was an engineer for Townsend Thorenson. He was rostered on the Herald of Free Enterprise, but a colleague wanted to swap shift with him so he was at home the night the ferry capsized. His mate drowned.
I've dodged multiple cases of vehicular manslaughter, pretty much every time I ride my bike on anything busier than a farm track...
On a more specific note, the priest at my uncle's church when he was a young boy (and being indoctrinated as a Polish Roman Catholic) was doing the obvious and some years later got quietly shipped off to Australia to avoid charges. Fortunately my uncle wasn't a victim of his.
I thought this was a very different thread to the one it is... my answer would have been "YES" to that... but to this one, nah, not really.
I was up the World Trade centre the night before 9/11. We have a photo date stamped 10 September from the top. On 9/11 we were going to the Statue of Liberty. My Metro train was stuck underground for 3 hours 200 yards away from the twin towers.
I saw Rolf Harris at the swimming pool.
More seriously, I was travelling home from Glasgow to Manchester in 88 on the a74 when the Lockerbie disaster happened, we past through before it happened so didn't see anything, but estimate we probably hadn't gone through the area much before, probably within half an hour at the most.
I was also in Manchester in 96 when it was bombed, heard it and saw some debris cloud, but wasn't close enough to be in any danger.
So I suggest people either stay very close to me, or very far away, being indecisive and opting for a middle ground isn't the safest option.
Nearly got robbed a few times working in a petrol station as a student...pretty standard stuff. Thankfully on one occasion a local had been watching these guys from the pub and came across. Compared to bombings/kidnapping etc. pretty minors stuff.
Me and a mate got held at knifepoint in Bradford on a Saturday afternoon back in the mid eighties.
Scraggy looking lad probably a bit older than us at the time claimed to be a member of the City crew and thought we were from the opposing team as we had their hair cuts or something equally daft.
Soon as we talked he realised we were not, but didn’t want to lose face so asked us for all our money. Told him to go away and gave him 50p.
Silly little twerp, but it could have been worse I spose.
Been in loads of car or foot journeys and seen an accident or incident what would have caught me had I been seconds later/earlier. Think that’s just life tbh.
Could also potentially be one of the causes for a thread like this.
When I was 22, me and a couple of mates were into body building and got reasonably well sculptured. After one particular night in town we fancied a taxi up to another friends house who lived in one of the rougher parts about 4 miles out.
Jumped into a taxi that was stood still at some lights and asked him to take us.
When we arrived, the driver looked like a ghost and nervous. Mate in the front looked at the driver and asked how much. Didn’t get an answer then we twigged he wasn’t a taxi at all, not even private hire. Poor guy must have wondered what we were doing.
Can’t actually remember how we left it but none of us were holes of the bottom so it will have been ok in the end.
mrs_oab walked home in Toxteth, on the way home from work.
She was about 30 seconds away from walking this street, her usual way home.
http://www.unsolved-murders.co.uk/murder-content.php?key=1762&termRef=David%20Ungi
I've been out for beers with him and his brother. We ended up in a Chinese eating fish head stew.
i walked past a man off his face holding a gun on cowley road in oxford. needless to say once i realised what he was holding i walked a damn site faster!
lots of police arrived quickly shortly after
Depends how you class these things I suppose, but I used to get the train to Potters Bar for school every day. Had the set of railway points in question hung on for another few hours I'd have been stood on the platform veeerrrrry near where a large piece of train eventually ended up.
When I was 7 (I think, thereabouts) I went with my gran on a dog walk in the local woods. I ran on ahead down the track to the allotments and the edge of the housing estate and some bloke was stood there. He asked where I was from and what I was doing. He said he was a friend of my mums and that I had to go with him to see her. I said no and ran back to my gran.
Later that day he kidnapped, raped and murdered a boy in the next town just a few miles away. Kid was the same age I was.
It's scary that from the small percentage of the population that are on here how many of us were nearly abducted as kids.
Working in London, I've dodged a few terrorism incidents in my time, Fishmongers Hall was the most recent. Just got back from lunch when I heard the shots.
Other than that, nothing more serious than being close to beaten up a few times (on a beach in Mexico about 3am springs to mind as one particularly lucky one).
But I'm a big lad, and usually people leave me alone.
I witnessed somebody get baseball batted in Salford Sainsbury’s when I worked there back in the late 80s.
The attack was definitely targeted rather than random, so I guess I would only have been in danger if I had got in the way of the backswing. Messy.
CLEANER TO CHECKOUTS PLEASE.
Sailor74 is Kenny senior. 😂
MEGALOLZ
Not in any way as serious as some that have been mentioned on here but first few years working in London I got called over by some blokes in a big transit van on at least 3 separate locations and perpetrators asking if I wanted some big stereo speakers for my house...
Just wondering if that used to happen in other cities in the late 90s.
Also (not sure who you'd say criminals in this case are) but I did have a bit of a 'what are you on about' type conversation one late evening with an indignant chap in a Fulham street who later I knew to be Barry Bulsara/George of the Jill Dando stitchup/cockup murder case...
Riding my Grifter home from the site where Harpurhey Asda was being built I was stopped on a quiet street next to waste ground by a bloke in a bronze Escort estate.
He said that my bike was the same as his son's which had recently been stolen. He demanded that I got in his car whilst he took us to the police station.
He was a bit sweaty and looked like Mike Harding.
I pedalled off and told my folks, who called the Police. I repeated the story and no more was said.
A few years later I was in senior school and repeated this story to a new mate - the same thing had happened to him. Same place, different kind of bike.
The bloke was arrested for kidnap and child molestation a year or two later. Turned out to be the father of a girl I knew quite well, a year below me in senior school.
Also, nearly thrown off a balcony in San Diego by a group of sailors. A longer story, probably for another time.
I was involved in a street brawl where I got hit over the head with a pick shaft. Lucky I wasn't seriously injured/brain damaged/killed. I looked pretty horrific in A&E though as I was covered head to toe in blood. Still have a lovely scar on my head.
The nearby house a few of my mates stayed in had a bit of a reputation for regular ambulance visits, best I remember was having had a few sherries I woke up on the sofa with the walls covered in blood, like a horror movie, turned out two of the guys had a 'pretend' sword fight, although the blood wasn't from the swords but one of them fell through a glass door and was cut up really badly, amazing I slept through all the shouts and screams and the ambulance turning up yet again.
Some scary bloke tried to drag me into his car when I was 9. A couple of other school mates with me kicked up an awful ruckus and he let go and drove off. I had a death grip on a hedge 😆
Naturally being 9 I thought it was something I'd done so said naff all about it to my parents.
Decided not to rush to get a train home from London one afternoon.
Turned out i likely would have been on the potters bar one.
Made getting home fun that evening though
Was out on my brother's stag night in our local town (in Northern Ireland) Was a long night plus some takeaway afterwards, we had walked to the taxi rank and surprisingly none there at 2am. We went into a phone box to phone a cab, just at that a 500lb car bomb detonated across the roundabout from where we standing (we'd just passed the car). The people outside were blown off their feet, phone box was untouched. It was loud! 4 police officers finishing their shift were injured, female officer had serious leg injuries. Detonated remotely from a carpark another 100 metres away, the terrorists had watched the whole thing.
I got into a row with a guy sat in his car blocking the exit to the car park by Chorlton (Manchester) Blockbuster Video. Despite me standing there calling him all sorts, he refused to acknowledge me. Then, whilst i was still shouting the odds, his mates, all armed with baseball bats and machetes, came running out of the Macdonalds next door with the takings. They promptly jumped in the car and off he went. Leaving me a bit shocked at the very close call i'd just had.
I got hard stopped on the M62. The cops thought (as I was in a BMW M2 with false plates) that I was a drug runner, they bought along the armed cops as they weren't sure...One of the first questions they asked me was "Why have you got 2 phones?" (one was a work phone)...I had also just sold a bike and had an envelope stuffed with £800.00 in my jacket pocket.
I honestly thought I was going to spend a few hours enjoying the hospitality of the West Yorkshire Police.
Oh, one about an ex colleague:
Him and a mate used to travel to London from Blackburn to go clubbing, pre the gay village in Manchester being a 'thing'.
They met this bloke in a club and ended up both kipping on his floor a couple of times.
A year or so later they recognised their host, a Mr Nilson, on telly following his arrest.
Not in any way as serious as some that have been mentioned on here but first few years working in London I got called over by some blokes in a big transit van on at least 3 separate locations and perpetrators asking if I wanted some big stereo speakers for my house…
Just wondering if that used to happen in other cities in the late 90s.
Yes, think they target students. I know a few people that bought them. Must be a common racket as I was up north. I'm not sure how criminal it is, I mean, they're just selling speakers right? If they were a well known high-end brand then maybe, but they were a weird brand that I'd never heard of. 'Audio Solutions' or something similar. I imagined them to be buying them cheap as chips from some warehouse and knocking them out to freshly loaded students Delboy style for a big markup. Enterprising really. I mean what first year student lad doesn't want a big pair of speakers? Can't remember anyone complaining about the speakers themselves, or how much they paid. I can see them now, big ugly pine-coloured floorstanders. Used to spot them in many a student house-party 🙂 In fact, I have vague memories of DJ'ing at one, blowing a pair of those speakers and having some mad hunt for another pair before everyone left.
They pulled me over a few times but I've always been a bit of an audio fiend so have always been good for speakers. I remember it being a bit market trader style bartering. Like you ask them how much they are and they ask you how much you want to pay etc etc, after which I generally wandered off.
Funny the stuff you forget.
Whilst driving the university safety bus I had a pair of dealers get on who threatened me so I had to run them around on their deliveries. Always one stayed in whilst stopped until we were on a dead end road. I booted it up to the end to turn round, both of them stood blocking the road, I decided I wasn't stopping and eventually they jumped out of the way. It was "interesting".
My dad was taught by Fred Talbot, he didn't do anything to him, too ugly for the paedos.