Always a Disaster for Someone.
Apr. 5th, 2010 11:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lenora_roseSucky thing happened today; I was in exactly the right place and time to totally fail both to prevent a crime, and to be anything like a useful witness.
I'd stopped by a 7-11 for a drink (as I'd walked up Pembina; not counting the two shopping stops, it was probably an hour and a half). As i was leaving, two older teen boys (very late high school or early college age) swooped past me from behind, *way* too fast, on bicycles. I thought it was kind of offensive, hitting racing speeds before you even leave the lot, and nearly crashing into someone without warning her, but stepped aside for the second as a reasonably polite person would do, with only the mildest urge to clothesline them.
Right after, a boy's voice yelped "The bikes!" and two boys of about 10 took off running past me.
And sure enough, the teenagers were vanishing up an alley on stolen bicycles. One of the two boys threw down his Slurpee in sheer frustration, then they both ran after, which i was sure was futile, though I'd have probably done the same.
I actually walked to the alley entrance to watch the kids running in a totally futile manner; then went back into the 7-11 to see if they had any kind of outside video surveillance (they do), and to let them know why I asked.
Heading back up Pembina, I saw the two boys a block ahead of me, and started to jog to catch up, when they turned around up the next side street, back towards the alley. So I followed.
When I got there, they were talking to a middle-aged woman, and one of the boys had his bike - with a badly bent back tire and ruined brakes. One of the teens had either been barrelling along too fast and got nicked by a car, or slammed into something trying to avoid being nicked by a car. The woman had come out to see if he was okay, which he said he was (Then limped across Pembina and up yet another side street, and even he was moving fast enough that by the time we heard this, there wasn't any use following.) She'd picked up the bike he'd left behind. (I looked at it, and I'm no bike mechanic, but the body looked sound, and the gear array was still intact and unmarked, so I could reassure the kid that it could probably be fixed.)
The other kid , apparently, had got his bike just this last month. He kept his back turned to us all most of the time, and said nothing; when i did see his face, he had shed a few tears, but was more obviously working very hard at suppressing more. The woman sounded pretty sure that it would be thrown aside by the thief, not kept; neither boy's parents were home (Which now I think about it, should mean at least one of the boys was 12, not 10, though, this incident aside, that neighbourhood is likely safe enough it didn't matter if the parents were pushing it), but they were expected within the hour, so she told them to get their parents to drive them around the neighbourhood; but both of us encouraged them to report it to the police, if only because, with video footage, there was a chance the perps might be identified. Since I saw the back of a pair of heads, one hooded and one dark-haired, and the woman could only say they looked like some kind of Asians (She came very close to saying something about "those Asians", which would have got her seriously snapped at by me; not least because the boy who was trying to to cry was Chinese, and didn't need that shit on top of this loss.)
The rest of my day was actually rather good. Part of me feels guilty about that, which is remarkably stupid. (Traded in some of my ridiculous pile of trade-in books. Watched the first of the new Who; already, in one episode, vastly better than The End of Time. Then again, almost anything would be better than the End of Time. Though really, he has to stop picking up pretty girls for companions.)
I'd stopped by a 7-11 for a drink (as I'd walked up Pembina; not counting the two shopping stops, it was probably an hour and a half). As i was leaving, two older teen boys (very late high school or early college age) swooped past me from behind, *way* too fast, on bicycles. I thought it was kind of offensive, hitting racing speeds before you even leave the lot, and nearly crashing into someone without warning her, but stepped aside for the second as a reasonably polite person would do, with only the mildest urge to clothesline them.
Right after, a boy's voice yelped "The bikes!" and two boys of about 10 took off running past me.
And sure enough, the teenagers were vanishing up an alley on stolen bicycles. One of the two boys threw down his Slurpee in sheer frustration, then they both ran after, which i was sure was futile, though I'd have probably done the same.
I actually walked to the alley entrance to watch the kids running in a totally futile manner; then went back into the 7-11 to see if they had any kind of outside video surveillance (they do), and to let them know why I asked.
Heading back up Pembina, I saw the two boys a block ahead of me, and started to jog to catch up, when they turned around up the next side street, back towards the alley. So I followed.
When I got there, they were talking to a middle-aged woman, and one of the boys had his bike - with a badly bent back tire and ruined brakes. One of the teens had either been barrelling along too fast and got nicked by a car, or slammed into something trying to avoid being nicked by a car. The woman had come out to see if he was okay, which he said he was (Then limped across Pembina and up yet another side street, and even he was moving fast enough that by the time we heard this, there wasn't any use following.) She'd picked up the bike he'd left behind. (I looked at it, and I'm no bike mechanic, but the body looked sound, and the gear array was still intact and unmarked, so I could reassure the kid that it could probably be fixed.)
The other kid , apparently, had got his bike just this last month. He kept his back turned to us all most of the time, and said nothing; when i did see his face, he had shed a few tears, but was more obviously working very hard at suppressing more. The woman sounded pretty sure that it would be thrown aside by the thief, not kept; neither boy's parents were home (Which now I think about it, should mean at least one of the boys was 12, not 10, though, this incident aside, that neighbourhood is likely safe enough it didn't matter if the parents were pushing it), but they were expected within the hour, so she told them to get their parents to drive them around the neighbourhood; but both of us encouraged them to report it to the police, if only because, with video footage, there was a chance the perps might be identified. Since I saw the back of a pair of heads, one hooded and one dark-haired, and the woman could only say they looked like some kind of Asians (She came very close to saying something about "those Asians", which would have got her seriously snapped at by me; not least because the boy who was trying to to cry was Chinese, and didn't need that shit on top of this loss.)
The rest of my day was actually rather good. Part of me feels guilty about that, which is remarkably stupid. (Traded in some of my ridiculous pile of trade-in books. Watched the first of the new Who; already, in one episode, vastly better than The End of Time. Then again, almost anything would be better than the End of Time. Though really, he has to stop picking up pretty girls for companions.)
