The southern California card rooms have unfortunately seen a lot of follow-home robberies over the years. Some, unfortunately, have resulted in murders.

Typically the targets are women or very elderly men, presumably because they are assumed to be least likely to fight back. This has given me a little more confidence to walk through those parking lots, since I am a tall middle-aged man, and don't fit the typical victim profile. I also leave my $ in a safe deposit box on premises or in a player account, so I don't walk out with big cash anyway.

Anyway, on January 19 there was a scary follow-home robbery where a middle-aged man was the victim, but it had a few unique elements to it:

- The robbers weren't very observant. The guy they followed had just chunked off all the cash he brought to Commerce, and had zero left when they confronted him in front of his home.

- The robbers had replica (fake) guns. Usually these robberies are done with real weapons.

- The robbers were scared off by.... an 11-year-old. The man's young son heard some commotion in the driveway and opened the door to see what was going on. For some reason this caused the robbers to run away, possibly because they didn't have real weapons and maybe thought the dude would start fighting if he thought his kid was in danger too.

- The man lived in a security complex with a guard! The idiotic guard just let them drive right behind him without asking any questions or attempting to stop them. If I were this guy, I would sue the HOA for this failure.


Here's the full story: https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/l...-home/3317349/