One week ago, my younger brother, cheong, in Penang was confronted by two robbers as he was walking back from his office to his apartment about 200 meters away. As the robbers got near him, they suddenly pushed him causing him to fall flat on the ground. He was lucky that his head did not hit any sharp or hard object. There were many instances reported in newspapers that the victims of snatch thieves went into coma when they hit their head on falling down and died. While lying flat on his back one of the robber held his legs and the other searched his shirt pocket. Fortunate for him at that moment, the two robbers spotted a police patrol car coming. They had no time to search his back pocket for the wallet. Before running off, the two robbers pushed him down the 2 meter deep drain just beside him. It was fortunate that the drain was not full and my brother managed to hold on to the handrail and landed in the drain with the feet first. He escaped with only some bruises and lacerated wound.
I'd two encounters with robbers many years back. The first incident happened in 1975. As I was walking along a deserted side lane in Paramount Garden to get my motorbike, two young men caught up with me from behind and demanded some money. I was taken a back but still managed to mutter in faint voice asking them how much they wanted. They demanded RM 30. I immediately realised that I'd more than that in my wallet and if they saw all the money I had in my wallet they might grabbed all of it. What should I do? Run or gave in? Realising that I could neither fought back or out run them, I decided to hand over the money to them but pondered how I could pull out my money so as not to alert them that there were more than RM 30 in my wallet. I took out my wallet and slowly and carefully pulled out RM30 so that the rest of them in the wallet was not exposed.The two young man just took the RM 30 and quickly ran away to join a third accomplice waiting in front. It never occurred to me there was this third accomplice. I just realized then that this third accomplice was there to watch out for police and also to block me in case I tried to run off. It could be said that these three young men were more scared than me and were in a hurry to leave the scene.
The second encounter happened about five years later in 1980. When I walked out from the cinema in Chow Kit KL and made a phone call at the phone booth in front of the cinema, suddenly a youth blocked me from coming out of the booth and warned me not to do anything foolish because he had a knife tucked at his waist. Not realizing the danger, I just instinctively wanted to confirm he had a knife as claimed and without hesitation I just stretched my hand to touch his waist and felt a handle-like hard object. I chose to believe he really had a knife. I surrendered all the cash I had, not much just about Rm50. ( Dato Liew Chook San,one of my close friend and colleague, used to laugh at me how could I felt comfortable to carry such small amount of money in the pocket. He was right as I was embarrassed in a few occasions for running short of money.) The young boy was not satisfied and demanded for the gold ring on my hand, which cost around Rm80 at that time. I decided to try my luck and told him that I could not hand over this ring to him because it had sentimental value as it was my wedding ring. To my surprise he just nodded his head with approval without hesitation.
Whenever I narrated these two personal experiences of mine to my friends, without fail all of them found it very amusing and unbelievable. According to the police to whom I made the report, these robbers were drug addicts. I suspect the robbers who preyed on my brother were also under the influence of drugs or pills. But why the behavior of the robbers today and robbers then are so different. Could it be due to the effect of pills and drugs these days which are much stronger than the drug of yesterday ?
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