Stranger approaches your car when stopped at a light...what's your plan?

[9mmfan]

Kind of a dated thread but thought I chime in.

Years ago I was driving home from an armed security job. It was about 4 am on a warm Sunday morning and I had turned down a street before mine so I could park on the 'right' side of the rode in front of my house. An young man wanders to my car as I am slowing down for a stop sign. He yells 'someone took my car' and could I help him. Now, I'm in uniform with security patches on the sleeves and wearing a full duty belt but he can't see that.
I see I have two options:
1. Just leave. Drive off. No harm no fowl.
2. Get involved. Then?

I was 15 years younger then so I chose option 2. I lowered my drivers window about half way, but only after I had pulled my carry piece and just held on to it why I talked to him. We were under a street light and he saw my handgun so he just stopped.
He ask if I would call the police and wait with him. I did call the police for him and waited for about 3 or 4 minutes until they showed up.
Turns out he had just left a party and was bombed off his ass. Someone had driven off in his car.
A cop showed up so I boogied.
Turned out well but if I had to do the same thing today I probable would have chosen option 1.

 

[Timjoebillybob]

scream german and pull down my pants.

I'll accept that. Although IMO the proper answer is "when in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout" Screaming in German would count, and if you can run in circles with your pants down, you are a better man than I sir.

 

[Mark 1911]

I have a holster mounted to the kick panel under my steering wheel. I keep a Glock 20 10mm in the holster when in the vehicle.

I lived in TX from 78 to 80 in the Houston area. I got lost one night after dark in a not-so-nice part of town when I saw a county sheriff squad parked in a gas station. I pulled in, got out of my car and as I approached his driver's door to ask directions He told me to go around to the passenger side. I looked in the car and he had a carbine pointed at me. More than a little surprised, I said all I wanted was directions, then he put the gun down but kept it on his lap. I chalked that one up to experience, and assumed he was on high alert from working in a rough area.

 

[Drail]

One of my favorite Jeff Cooper stories was about one of his Gunsite students who lived in L.A.. It seems the local gangstas decided a great way to rob people was to hide up under an overpass on the highway and then wait for rush hour traffic. When all the cars were stopped they would pick a victim and run down and rob them while they were stopped - because they couldn't just drive away. Cooper's student found himself in this predicament one day and when the bad guy ran up to his car Cooper's boy pulled a .45 and stuck it in his face and asked him "What do you want?" The bad guy replied "I want to be someplace else." Awareness is your primary defense. Every minute of every day - no days off.

 

[jblomenberg16]

One of my favorite Jeff Cooper stories was about one of his Gunsite students who lived in L.A.. It seems the local gangstas decided a great way to rob people was to hide up under an overpass on the highway and then wait for rush hour traffic. When all the cars were stopped they would pick a victim and run down and rob them while they were stopped - because they couldn't just drive away. Cooper's student found himself in this predicament one day and when the bad guy ran up to his car Cooper's boy pulled a .45 and stuck it in his face and asked him "What do you want?" The bad guy replied "I want to be someplace else." Awareness is your primary defense. Every minute of every day - no days off.

This is a very real threat in many parts of the world. When I travel for work, I often have a local driver take me from the airport to the hotel, to the office, etc. In several countries, including South Africa and Brazil, the drivers will not stop if they don't have to. Last August we witnessed a carjacking in Jo'burg. Basically the scenario you described to a T. Traffic stopped at an overpass. Thugs swarmed the cars and smashed and grabbed purses, briefcases, etc.

We had some thugs try to do a hit on our vehicle using the "confuse and redirect" approach. We did stop at an intersection as there was really no other choice. They could tell we weren't locals, and I'm sure expected we were carrying laptops, phones, etc. Two guys came to the front of the van we were in and doused the windshield with what looked like windex or something similar...only that it was thicker and less easy to see through. They started "Washing the windshield" like you might expect. However, 4 other thugs came up behind us, hoping our driver was distracted. Our driver was a professional and new the trick. He said "HOLD ON" and he gunned it, driving around the cars in front of us and through the intersection. He had left plenty of room in front of us to maneuver, and that probably saved us from getting robbed.

 

[Drail]

Always watch your six and leave enough space to get around vehicles in front of you. An old man taught me that when I was a kid.

 

[IndyDave1776]

This reminds me of one of those days on the job driving. I had to pick up two steel coils in Pittsburgh. General Sherman once remarked that if he owned both Texas and Hell, he would live in Hell in rent Texas out. I feel the same way about Pittsburgh. After following what the map showed as a principal route which was hardly adequate to qualify as a street, I encountered a hill that was like driving up the side of a wall with a stoplight on top. I knew being stopped under a load was going to be a problem, so I was sweating blood, but got through the light without stopping, thinking I was home free. The other side of the hill was just as steep going down and crooked as a dog's hind leg as an unwelcome bonus. The street ended in a T at the bottom of the hill with no good indication of where to go, and in an instant's hesitation, the horns started behind me. I set the parking brake and walked back to the first car behind me. The driver put his window down a little. I looked down at him and said, "I'll make you a deal. If you tell me how to get back to the turnpike, I will get out of your way." He did, and that is how I escaped from that nasty hellhole known as Pittsburgh.

 

[Alamo]

The first defensive shooting by a concealed handgun license holder in Texas occurred less than two months after concealed carry became legal when the CHL holder was trapped in traffic (and possibly by his seatbelt, and his much larger attacker punched him through the driver's side window opening. The attacker, Kenny Tavai, punched the CHL holder, Gordon Hale III, several times in the face, breaking bones and (permanently) damaging Hale's left eye. Tavai started to leave then renewed his punching, and Hale shot him once in the chest.

Earlier somehow Hale's vehicle clipped the mirror on Tavai's van, and Tavai chased Hale until Hale was forced to stop by traffic. Then Tavai got out of his vehicle and started the attack.

The Dallas DA charged Hale with murder, but a grand jury no-billed it.

This isn't exactly "stranger approaches car" -- there was a short period of history to the altercation -- but being trapped in your car is bad. I don't know if Hale rolled his window down to talk or Tavai broke it out, but if I had any hint of problem, I would not roll my window down, and I would undo my seatbelt if I can't drive away.

Texas law has since been amended to presume that you are acting reasonably when you use deadly force against someone who has used force to enter your vehicle, habitation, or place of business or employment. (There are a couple qualifications to this, but nothing a normal law abiding person has to worry about). So another reason not to roll down your window -- if the "stranger" breaks it out, that's a pretty good indicator of "force" and that you are under attack.

 

[X piller X]

one night, a lifted dodge pickup flew around me on a 1 lane street in the middle of an intersection, they then brake checked me. I slowed down and gave them plenty of room, they sped up then stopped up ahead blocking the entire road. I didn't know what their intentions were but I was at full alert, I stopped a couple hundred feet back, turned my highbeams on, and unholstered my firearm and waited to see how the situation would play out. I never pointed, and considering I have dark tinted windows with my highbeams on I'm sure he/she was unaware I had a firearm. This was on a country backroad with noone around at about midnight.

Needless to say, what felt like the longest 30 seconds passed before he decided to proceed in the same direction, which I gave him a couple minute head start.

I had since thought about this scenario plenty of times and what I could have done better in case I ever encounter a similar situation again

 

[magus]

Years ago I had a situation where a driver went crazy on me on US 20 coming back from Valpo after a night of cards. Brake-checks, road stops, slow crawl driving, even speeding ahead to turn around and then come back at me head on IN. MY. LANE. at high speed. I don't think anything would have changed had I been armed, but it would have been peace of mind knowing I was covered in the case it came to non-vehicular violence.

That night was... intense.