this post was submitted on 17 May 2024
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[–] [email protected] 23 points 6 months ago (2 children)

what thw actual fuck. that's some 'innocent civilian caught up in sci fi series shenanigans' shit.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (1 children)

So insane at first I thought it was an onion article. Seems like an isolated event why someone would require laptops? A cyber security nutjob?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Buy with stolen credit cards, easy to flip on gumtree. The urgency is probably due to the cards getting cancelled at any time (or fraud protection kicking in). The article wasnt clear on whose cards were being used.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

The woman said that she helped him rob her, so I assume that where her cards.

This story is so odd, that I would be disappointed it is was just about acquiring laptops to resale them later.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I got worried as my best friend shops there with his family and let him know what had happened there just incase.

The whole thing is terrifying.

Makes me wonder what would have happened if she wasn’t able to purchase the laptops.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

@Duenan @Taleya "A mother says a man armed with a knife told her to 'just stop crying' as he forced her to drive and buy laptops in Melbourne's south-east while her six-month-old daughter sat in the back seat.

...

"Police say the victim was getting out of her car at the Stud Park Shopping Centre [in Rowville] last Friday night when she was confronted by a man who threatened her with a knife and forced her back into the driver's seat of her Suzuki S Cross."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-17/woman-child-abducted-melbourne-shopping-centre-laptops-police/103859562

There was a thread on here about someone considering moving to Rowville?

Yeah, here's a good example of why that's a bad idea...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

@ajsadauskas @Duenan @Taleya

Is it just me, or is this whole story so bizarre that there has to be more to it than what has been reported so far?

My mind immediately went into 'what if it happened to me' mode and there are many questions based on info we have been given so far.

In a couple of weeks, I suspect this will be a different story. hopefully with an offender identified.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

I don’t think there’s any more to it than what’s been reported on the media though I did read the entire abc article at work and saw it a lot on tv.

To some degree it was planned and calculated. because of where the offender was telling the mother to go and had to have a place to purchase the laptops.

He chose high value items that could be easily resold too.

Last of all he picked a victim carefully where he had leverage against them.

I really do hope they find the offender and put him away for quite awhile.

What do you think there might be more to the story?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

He remained in the car with her child while she was forced to make the purchases.

This is the bit I don't understand. How could he know she wouldn't involve police the moment he let her out of sight? I know there's the threat to the baby, but the risk he took there is unbelievable.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

We are not talking about a criminal mastermind here.

It is was a high-risk, low return heist. She could have called the police, liberated her baby, had the stores brick the laptops on purpose and he would have gotten nothing.

The way it was, he (as so far) managed to get away with hot, easily traceable goods and she has suffered a financial loss and serious trauma. No one will win in the long term.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


A mother says a man armed with a knife told her to "just stop crying" as he forced her to drive and buy laptops in Melbourne's south-east while her six-month-old daughter sat in the back seat.

In a detailed statement to the media, the mother spoke of the "abhorrent" encounter, where her attacker promised her he would not take her child and apologised for ruining her night before letting her free.

Police say the victim was getting out of her car at the Stud Park Shopping Centre last Friday night when she was confronted by a man who threatened her with a knife and forced her back into the driver's seat of her Suzuki S Cross.

Kieren said the man sat in the back seat of the car with her daughter and forced her to drive to several electrical stores nearby.

The man told her to drive to stores on the South Gippsland Highway in Cranbourne and Frankston-Dandenong Road in Dandenong, where he demanded she buy laptop computers.

"We're also appealing to anyone who may have driven cars and have dash cam footage of that area between about 5:20pm and about 6:30pm which may have captured this male in the lead up to the incident," Senior Constable Minehan said.


The original article contains 1,038 words, the summary contains 208 words. Saved 80%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!