the cars. After a few minutes of this taunting,
however, they simply got up and left and walked
away. It seemed that we were in the clear. Relieved,
we started to pack up our things and prepared to
head out.
At that moment, two of the five came back
wearing bandanas over their faces. This almost
made me laugh — as if a bandana was going to
stop us from recognizing someone we had shared
an entire day with, or from identifying them in a
police line-up. It wasn’t funny when I saw a flash of
silver, and I realized that one of them was carrying
a handgun. They started yelling at us in Spanish as
they waved the gun in our faces, telling us to give
them everything. Of course, we obliged, tossing
over all of our bags, begging them hysterically not
to kill us. They told us to get in the tree and the four
of us ran toward the tree and started to climb up.
Changing their minds, they instead yelled at us
to get in the water. We instead started frantically
toward the water, Pauline and I still pleading for
our lives in Spanish as Fox and Sam just tried to
figure out what they wanted. If they wanted to kill
us there, they could have gotten away with it. And
they almost did.
In a single-file line, we trudged down the bank as
quickly as we could toward the water. I was last. I
turned around to see him holding the gun with his
arm extended, heard the quiet but powerful *click*
as he cocked the hammer, the barrel a foot from
my face, aimed directly at my head. That sound
will stick with me forever. I thought I was going
to die, but fortunately instinct kicked in. Before
they had a chance to shoot us, we had all jumped
into the water and swam away from the shore and
were swept downstream by the swift current in the
middle of the river.
Pauline immediately began having a panic attack
— she still had her shoes on and was being weighed
down, struggling to keep her head above the water.
The three of us circled her, trying to make sure she
didn’t fucking drown. Fortunately, we spotted a
paddle boarder and Fox swam away to wave him
down; he quickly paddled toward us and threw
Pauline his life jacket. He helped escort us across
the water as there was nowhere convenient to
get out on the other side of the river. It was a slow
process, taking many breaks to rest on my back
or hold onto the paddle board. The current in the
Potomac in August is dangerous from all the rain
D.C. gets in the summer (a detective told us he was
surprised we survived, as most people who try to
swim across the river at this time of year drown).
After at least 15 minutes of swimming, our feet
touched the mud on the other side of the river, a few
hundred feet downstream from a boathouse called
Fletcher’s Cove. We used the paddle boarder’s
phone to call the police and told them to meet us at
the Cove. The police arrived right as we walked up
from the river bank, bedraggled, covered in mud,
only in our swim trunks without shoes or any other
possessions. We described to them what happened,
and they called in a goddamn helicopter and a
police boat to look for them — which seemed a little
extra. They found a couple of people who matched
the description, but it wasn’t them. Whoever it was
is still out there.
I called my mom from a cop’s phone and very
nonchalantly told her what had happened — that
we had been robbed, but we were ok and could she
please pick me up. I think my tone threw her off —
she just replied “ok, sure” before a pause and then
the inevitable, “Wait, WHAT?!” But physically, I
was fine. All of our parents came to get us and bring
us clean clothes, shoes, towels and maybe a sense of
security. I tracked my phone from the cop’s phone,
and that must have scared the robbers when they
realized it was being tracked, as the cops found
my bag on the other side of the river with almost
everything in it and returned it to me within an
hour. My total financial loss from this? Ten dollars
cash that was in my wallet. I went home and slept
for 12 hours.
***
When you see the statistics for all-too-frequent
mass shootings on the news, they recount the
number of dead and wounded. The survivors are
called “lucky” because they happened to be in a
better place at a better time when the shooting
occurred. Media outlets rarely report on their
psychological damage, or the damage caused from
all of the less “sensational” gun violence that
occurs in this country every day. The body
count for my incident?
Zero dead, zero wounded.
Probably less than $100
value stolen from the four
of us collectively.
A success story.
There are no statistics
about the fact that I no
longer feel safe in any
communal space, that, at
any moment, I have an
exit strategy, preparing for
anything to walk through
the door. Because in this
country, that’s likely.
I had been robbed once
before — when I was 12,
but that was by some
random guy in an alley,
without a gun. An alley
is somewhere you might
expect to get robbed, and
without the gun, my life
was never in danger. I was
just a dumb kid who looked
like an easy target, and he
took advantage. I was a
little shaken up after that,
but nowhere near the magnitude I felt after being
robbed at gunpoint. This time, I was at a swimming
hole in the summer, somewhere you might expect
safety, somewhere to escape to — not from. That
sense of safety and community is all but shattered.
Beyond the countless lives lost, this is what we give
up — as a community, as a country — for guns. Never
being safe, always looking over our shoulders, at the
movies, at school, at church, at a bar, in your own
home. Is it worth it?
Wednesday, November 20, 2019 // The Statement
6B
From Page 5B
There are no statistics
about the fact that I no
longer feel safe in any
communal space, that at
any moment I have an
exit strategy, preparing
for anything to walk
through the door.