On Sun, 2 Nov 2003, Gautam Mukunda wrote:
> --- Julia Thompson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Last time any female member of my family was on the
> > Boston subway after
> > dark, someone pointed a gun at her. So I'm a little
> > less enthusiastic
> > about after-hours use of the Boston subway than you.
> >
> > Julia
>
> Wow - I'd never heard of such a thing happening. That
> is, though, one thing that is definitely true about
> the DC Metro system - it is _incredibly_ safe. DC
> was, for a long time the murder capital of the US. Up
> until a year or two ago, I believe that there had
> _never_ been a murder on a Metro train, and the one
> that did occur happened, I believe, at the hands of
> someone having a psychotic break - not the sort of
> thing that the police can prevent with any real success.
This was when I was about 6 or 7 years old. My mother used to go to
Quincy a few times a year by herself in the evening -- she'd have my
father pick up dinner for himself and us kids, and she'd leave as soon as
he got home from work. She'd take a bus to Harvard Square (the Red Line
didn't go any farther towards Arlington than that at that time, the nice
Alewife (sp?) station with its parking garage was years in the future),
take the Red Line to the other end in Quincy, and do some shopping there
without children in tow. The last time she did that, on the way back a
man sat down next to her, pulled out a gun, played with it, and pointed it
at her at one point between the Central stop and Harvard. When she got to
Harvard, she got off, planning to find a police officer if he followed
her. He went off in the other direction. She came home on the bus and
never took the subway at night by herself again.
The only times I've been on the subway at night were times when I was
meeting someone at South Station, and I'd be with some man who'd driven me
from New Hampshire and gone with me to pick up whoever it was. The person
most likely to volunteer for that duty was a reasonably large man who had
a leather jacket, so I felt reasonably safe in his company. :)
Julia
_______________________________________________
http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
