Close call

After lunch at Plaza Ampang, we headed back to Ampang Park for our underground walk transit to our office. I told my 2 lunch partners: Ganesh and Newton that I need to go to the ATM to withdraw money. I left them and wasted little time as it was beginning to rain and there was a scheduled meeting at 2 p.m.

Usually, after a cash withdrawal, I would be very conscious of the people around me especially if there are people who appear to be tailing but this time I let my guard down because I was preoccupied of how to get back without getting wet.

I applied what my father-in-law would do in a situation like this. Use newspaper to shelter the head. I bought The Star newspaper from the Ampang Park LRT station and took out the classified section ready for disposal once it got soaked.

While waiting for the lift to arrive, a Malay man told a woman probably in her late 40s that the elevator was faulty. I knew it wasn’t because I have taken this lift a thousand times. True enough, the lift came and a group of people went in. I stood right at the corner to deter pick-pockets.

Within seconds, the lift reached the only level at the top. To my surprise, only 1 or maybe 2 people got out of the lift. The rest about 5-7 of them remained inside. I thought they could be foreigners who are unsure where they were going. As I made my way to the lift doors, a burly man deliberately blocked my exit.

Immediately I knew something was amiss. At the same time, someone from behind lifted my left leg slacks to grab my feet just above my ankle. This got me berserk. I have heard and read about this modus operandi before. It had happened to one of my colleagues before, in a bus.

Rage

I got into a rage and shouted “Apa ini ?!!!”. It is strange because that few seconds when the person tried to hold my leg, my mind went blank as if something was trying to cloud my mind.

I am not sure if it was panic, near hypnosis, reflex action or pure anger; like a man possessed, I pushed and jostled out of the elevator. As I exited I ran out into the rain with the newspaper on my head to the adjacent Hotel Nikko. No one followed me.

I am not sure what would have happened had I been trapped inside the lift once the doors closed.

Later, Ganesh and Newton recounted to me that they were actually outside the lift waiting for the rain to stop and saw me running into the rain but did not witness the incident.

In hindsight, the decoy where the man said the lift was faulty could be a ploy to coax me into using the escalator. 4 years ago, my neighbour had relayed to me his bad experience of being robbed a few thousand ringgit while on the escalator. He had exchange cash from a Money Changer.

How they pick-pocket on the escalator

I spoke to my neighbour this morning and here is an account of his story. It happened in Sogo Shopping Complex. As my neighbour work overseas, he had just exchanged a few thousand cash from the Money Changer and was on his way down the escalator from the 2nd floor to ground floor.

As he was approaching the ground floor, a man pretended to drop something on the floor and bent down to look for the "missing" item. The man would stretch his arms to block the escalator exit causing my neighbour to back step on the escalator steps. Unknown to him, there were already a few collaborators behind who would then pretend to hold him as he bump to them. It is at this confused "shoving", the crook(s) took the cash from his pocket.