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.

