Creepy guy pulling a gun at the parish

As I’ve mentioned the other day, there was a car in the upper back parking lot rather aggressively parked up against my car and which was sporting all sorts of logistical red flags. I moved my car just a bit so that I was fully in back of him, just to the side a bit, as it creeped me out that he was just a few inches away.  The only picture take-away I thought I had was the strange licence plate. The window reflections obscured the inside of the car from the back (see above), or so I thought, until just now, a few days later, when I ran the picture through some brightness and contrast tweaking. Unfortunately, the picture is still super grainy and splotchy with reflections of light from the street lights and my headlights (see below).

The driver has flipped himself around in the driver seat and is looking back. It looks like there may be a possibility that he is brandishing a pistol. Of course, I’m NOT, NOT, NOT accusing anyone of anything. It just looks like his brandishing and aiming a pistol might be a good possibility in conjunction with multiple and serious red flags that were presenting at the same time. Again, I realize that the picture is grainy and is of poor quality. Did I say I wasn’t accusing anyone of anything? The red edits on the same picture below might help you you to see what’s going on. I already knew he was wearing a hat when I walked up to my car from another angle, from which angle, by the way, I could clearly see into the car and he appeared to be the only person in the car.

When someone holds a pistol in your direction, the only thing to be seen is the tiny end of the barrel and perhaps a bit of the slide. The rest is covered by, in this case, two hands. Even though he’s aiming directly at me, I doubt he would hit me. The angles of the windows would throw any bullets off by some inches. Or one hopes so. Even though I couldn’t consciously see the gun, I’m guessing my brain could pick this up. It’s part of situational awareness to pay attention to heightened attention, keeping one “left of bang” as they say.

I’m guessing that his brandishing is what was making him so overconfident. I’m guessing he was thinking that I could see his gun. I did not see his gun until now. He saw that I wasn’t responding in kind. He was waiting for something to happen, baiting, threatening. By this point, even without seeing the gun, I was convinced that he was up to no good because of all the red flags:

• In an entirely empty campus with fully three different parking lots, he had parked next to my car within seconds of my arrival (but after I had quickly gone to check on the doors on campus), and he parked so close to my car (in the opposite direction) that he was purposely blocking the use of both passenger doors. Also, that’s a difficult parking lot to drive into, being so steep that one’s tires will spin. The other parking lots are paved and wide open. He didn’t scrape the paint off my car for being so close, but, just to say, it was really close, entirely creepy.
• He was wearing a hat, at night, in his car, partially blocking sight of his face.
• There was no one else that I could see in the car when I walked up to mine, except that a couple of minutes into this incident I did see a mop of hair appear for a fraction of a second at the bottom of the passenger window, and then violently go down again. This would explain why the use of the passenger door was blocked. Maybe that person is shy. Maybe that’s his kid who was playing hide and seek. Maybe that’s a partner in crime. Maybe that’s just a wig he wears when committing crimes and he was getting ready to put it on. Maybe that’s a victim of human trafficking.

Had I seen the gun, I would have had to hypothesize that this was about human trafficking and this was effectively a kidnapped hostage. I’m guessing he thought I was the buyer as I had obviously come up coincidentally at a prearranged time before whoever the real buyer is could do so. But I wasn’t producing any cash. Perhaps he just thought I was having second thoughts, or wasn’t convinced he wasn’t law enforcement. Greed is what would keep him around for so long. This was a stand-off that went on for a good eight minutes. I don’t know the price of what I’m guessing is a child, but I’m still guessing that he was expecting many tens of thousands of dollars. For that kind of money, people risk going to prison for a long time, even for life, and even for death in this capital punishment state. People also risk going to hell for eternity.

Someone mocked me later for not being “welcoming.” Sigh. Bad things do happen. Just down the way from the parish, in the next parish over, there was a beheading just the other day. I know the EMT who attended that incident.

Since I didn’t know about the gun yet, but because of all the red flags, I thought it best to just try to move this person along by playing loud music and having the bright headlights shining on him, drawing attention of whatever of the rest of the town that cared to look to see what the mayhem was all about. He endured eight minutes of this. I guess he really wanted money or whatever the deal was supposed to be. He finally left.