Carjacking Scheme Hoax Still Teaches Valuable Parking Lot Safety Lessons

Perhaps you have seen an e-mail similar to this:

Be aware of new car-jacking scheme.  Read, then forward this email - BE AWARE and BE SAFE. Imagine: You walk across the parking lot, unlock your car and get inside. Then you lock all your doors, start the engine and shift into REVERSE. Habit! You look into the rear-view window to back out of your parking space and you notice a piece of paper, some sort of advertisement stuck to your rear window. So, you shift into PARK, unlock your doors and jump out of your vehicle to remove that paper (or whatever it is) that is obstructing your view... when you reach the back of your car, that is when the car-jackers jump out of nowhere ... jump into your car and take off -- your engine was running, your purse is in the car, and they practically mow you down as they speed off in your car.

  BE AWARE OF THIS NEW SCHEME

 Just drive away and remove the paper that is stuck to your window later......... and be thankful that you read this email and that you forwarded it to your friends

I’ve done some checking and no one I know has heard of this particular M.O. out there on the street.   A follow up with the Urban Legends people at About.com confirms -- it's a hoax.  Yet, people are passing this around all over the place and some "reality self-defense" and "street defense" Web sites are carrying it as a factual scheme.

Think about how difficult this scheme would be to actually pull off for the bad guy.  Unless someone has actually watched you park so they could paper your car (Awareness Tip #1: Is someone watching you when you pull in?), the bad guy would have to paper ALL THE CARS in the lot to make sure they would get a hit.  Plus, they would have to follow you in the lot until you got into your car, started it and then stopped to remove the paper.  The criminals would have to be very close to you by the time you started your car and would have to know generally where you are going to stop when reversing to make this complicated maneuver work.  The e-mail says they "jump out of nowhere"!

It is a lot easier for a carjacker to use the old fashioned method -- wait on a street corner and jack the motorists that stop at the red light.  The VAST amount of carjackings is more of a strong-arm move with an armed assailant confronting you and ordering you out of the car.  Why try and follow someone all around the parking lot where you don't know if the person is going to get into a car at all?

Here are the most common carjacking schemes:

• Approach victim when stopped at gas stations;

• Approach victim at red lights;

• Hit victim's car with car staging a fender-bender, getting victim out of the car;

• Pretend to be a stranded motorist.

However, even if the above-mentioned e-mail is not true, it does hold some merit because car parks and parking garages are prime hunting grounds for criminals.  There have been numerous, well-publicized, stranger abduction rape/homicides that have originated in parking lots. For example, in Kearney, Nebraska, 17-year-old Anne Sluti was approached in a Wal-Mart parking lot in broad daylight, hit over the head with a club, dragged into a Chevy Suburban and repeatedly raped over a period of five days. 

The key to avoiding this type of situation is to WAKE UP, look around and see if anyone is following you.

How can you tell?  One easy way is to zig-zag through the lot.  Don't walk directly to your car.  Walk down one aisle and then cut through the row of cars to another aisle.  See if anyone walking or driving around you has to suddenly speed up or change their course to maneuver over to get close to you.  Not sure if they did or didn't change their course?  Zig-zag again to another aisle.  Do this as many times as necessary to see if anyone is watching you.

If someone DOES change course suddenly to intercept you, immediately shift direction and walk back through the row of cars and back to the store for help.

A predator selecting a victim has to go through at least some rudimentary process.  Remember, his biggest fear is the fear of getting caught, so he needs to see something in you or the environment that tells him that he can grab you and get away with it.

You would expect that any predator looking to either rob you or rape you will need to be reasonably certain that:

·        You will be in a spot where you can be approached relatively unseen or unheard by others;

·        He will be able to get close enough to you to either coerce you to comply (by showing you a weapon or threatening you with harm) or to simply hit or grab you;

·        And he can egress (leave) the area without being stopped or followed.

To spoil his plan you just need to change the above factors so they don’t work in his favor. 

1. Park in an area that is – or appears to be – visible to others.  Normally, the closer to the front of the store or business the better.  I know that a lot of us want to park away from other cars to save our doors from dings, but parking in the remote corner of the lot is increasing your odds of attack.  Even if the spaces around the corner are closer to the door, it still might make sense to park in front where there are more pedestrians.
2. A simple tactic is to stop right inside or right outside of the doors before you walk into the lot.  Take a look around.  Is someone looking at you?  Do people and cars appear to be moving normally?  Use the parking lot zig-zag to flush out a predator cruising the lot for victims.
3. Don't let guys stop you and ask you questions (part of the interviewing process).  First of all, what is a man doing asking a woman for help, the time, a cigarette, etc.?   Whether they are on foot or in a vehicle, use the soft challenge to gain distance from them and beware.  Be prepared to escalate to the hard challenge or to zig-zag back through the cars toward the store.
4. Finally, never, ever, ever get in his car.  The odds are tremendous that you are not coming back.  You will be taken to a secondary crime scene where your worst nightmares live.

Unfortunately, since parking lot and parking garages are transitional areas for people coming and going, they make for good hunting grounds for predators.

Use this knowledge to keep your guard up and stay safe.

Brad Parker