My husband and I were robbed at gunpoint yesterday.
Houston had their once every 3 years "ice day" which closed most of the highways around town and prevented us from going to work. We could have driven in, but did not want to risk the icy roads and inexperienced drivers. We found ourselves in our warm cozy house all day working from home. Around noon we decided we would go for a walk when it warmed up a bit more, around 3 PM. We continued to do work, I did some yoga, and then we headed out the door at exactly 3:02.
We recently moved to the Montrose area of Houston, which has been an up and coming, trendy neighborhood for some time now. We love how close everything is to our house and that we can walk to grocer stores, bars, coffee shops, and art museums. We decided to walk on our normal running route around an elementary school.
It was a blistering cold that swept us initially while we were walking down our street, but as we continued walking and chatting about the day, the cold wore off. We both had on gloves which made the cold easier to handle. After about 15 minutes though, I had enough of the 30 degree weather (I am a Texan), and we were on our way back. We were on a residential street flanked with half million dollar 3-story townhomes on each side of the street when we crossed past an intersection with a car which we thought was stopped. It started slowly moving toward us, almost hitting us. We didn't think twice about the car and even muttered to ourselves "oh don't mind us! we are just walking here." We continued down the street.
At the next intersection, the same car (it was easy to spot, being a light turquoise color car from the 90s) approached us from behind then swerved and parked in front of us, blocking us from crossing the intersection. Two men jumped out of the car, one with a red bandanna holding a gun directly at us. They told us something to the effect of "stay calm and nothing will happen."
I thoroughly believed the man. The other man with him searched our pockets while the driver remained in the car. I had nothing with me since we were only going on a short walk, but my husband had his iPhone and wallet with him. We didn't think twice about protesting, just kept our hands up. The entire ordeal lasted under 20 seconds and the car sped away, or so we thought.
The true terror was hearing them make a u-turn and come back our direction after which we took off running and hid in the alcove of townhouse we were closest to. I frantically rang the doorbell but to no avail. The car sped out of the neighborhood and we ran home. Hearts pounding, I was terrified the car would be back and would want to shoot us for seeing their faces. Every car scared me, but fortunately we were under 5 minutes from home and ran back the entire way.
After that it was a whirlwind. We called the police, cancelled the important cards right away, and tried to see if my husband had his "find my iPhone" app enabled (which he didn't - I HIGHLY recommend everyone enable this app).
It's more upsetting to me that this happened in our neighborhood. We live in one of the nicer areas of Houston, and it was so brazen for these guys to be out in broad daylight. We refuse to be victims of a crime and will continue to go on walks and runs in our neighborhood. Just maybe won't carry anything with us from now on. Karma will come back to these guys. Until then, I hope the nightmares of this day will eventually fade. It could have been a lot worse and we are forever thankful it was not.
