Safety Tips for Women

From an e-mail...sorry if you've seen this before.

1. Tip from Tae Kwon Do: The elbow is the strongest point on your body. If you are close enough to use it, do!



2. Learned this from a tourist guide in New Orleans. If a robber asks for your wallet and/or purse, DO NOT HAND IT TO HIM. Toss it away from you....chances are that he is more interested in your wallet and/or purse than you, and he will go for the wallet/purse. RUN LIKE MAD IN THE OTHER DIRECTION!



3. If you are ever thrown into the trunk of a car, kick out the back tail lights and stick your arm out the hole and start waving like crazy. The driver won't see you, but everybody else will. This has saved lives.





4. Women have a tendency to get into their cars after shopping, eating, working, etc., and just sit (doing their checkbook, or making a list, etc. DON'T DO THIS!) The predator will be watching you, and this is the perfect opportunity for him to get in on the passenger side, put a gun to your head, and tell you where to go. AS SOON AS YOU GET INTO YOUR CAR, LOCK THE DOORS AND LEAVE.



5. A few notes about getting into your car in a parking lot, or parking

garage:

A.) Be aware: look around you, look into your car, at the passenger side floor, and in the back seat.

B.) If you are parked next to a big van, enter your car from the passenger door. Most serial killers attack their victims by pulling them into their vans while the women are attempting to get into their cars.

C.) Look at the car parked on the driver's side of your vehicle, and the passenger side. If a male is sitting alone in the seat nearest your car, you may want to walk back into the mall, or work, and get a guard/policeman to walk you back out. IT IS ALWAYS BETTER TO BE SAFE THAN SORRY. (And better paranoid than

dead.)



6. ALWAYS take the elevator instead of the stairs. (Stairwells are horrible places to be alone and the perfect crime spot).



7. If the predator has a gun and you are not under his control, ALWAYS RUN! The predator will only hit you (a running target) 4 in 100 times; And even then, it most likely WILL NOT be a vital organ. RUN!



8. As women, we are always trying to be sympathetic: STOP. It may get you raped, or killed. Ted Bundy, the serial killer, was a good-looking, well educated man, who ALWAYS played on the sympathies of unsuspecting women. He walked with a cane, or a limp, and often asked "for help" into his vehicle or with his vehicle, which is when he abducted his next victim.



9. Another Safety Point: Someone just told me that her friend heard a crying baby on her porch the night before last, and she called the police because it was late and she thought it was weird. The police told her "Whatever you do, DO NOT open the door."



The lady then said that it sounded like the baby had crawled near a window, and she was worried that it would crawl to the street and get run over. The policeman said, "We already have a unit on the way, whatever you do, DO NOT open the door." He told her that they think a serial killer has a baby's cry recorded and uses it to coax women out of their homes thinking that someone dropped off a baby. He said they have not verified it, but have had several calls by women saying that they hear baby's cries outside their doors when they're home alone at night.



Please pass this on and DO NOT open the door for a crying baby.----This e-mail should probably be taken seriously because the Crying Baby theory was mentioned on America's Most Wanted this past Saturday when they profiled the serial killer in Louisiana.

[Big Ed]

There's probably some good advice there, but the "crying baby" story is an urban legend.

http://www.snopes.com/crime/warnings/crybaby.htm

We
began receiving this warning on 16 January 2003, when it came to be mailed to us by a number of readers. Although nothing in the text of the alert says anything about the serial killer operating in the Baton Rouge area of Louisiana, some of the first versions of the message to arrive in our inbox carried the name of Linda C. Mabile (along with her Baton Rouge address and phone numbers), presenting her as someone who might have been the author of the piece. Later versions of the same warning omitted the Mabile .sigblock and were instead prefaced by statements that amounted to saying this bit of intelligence applied to a serial killer on the loose in that part of the state.

A serial killer was operating in the Baton Rouge area, but Derrick Todd Lee, the suspect indicted for the May 2002 beating and stabbing death of Charlotte Murray Pace (and linked by DNA to the murders of five more women in the area), is not known to have procured his victims by luring them from their homes with the help of a recording of a baby's crying, nor has he admitted to such since his arrest. We spoke to a reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune who has worked on the story, and this bit of intelligence about a crying baby was news to her. She hadn't encountered anything like this in her examination of the case, not even a whisper of it from the police involved in the investigation. Were this killer luring women with the aid of an infant's taped cries, that detail would be known both to those investigating the murders and those reporting on them (especially if police dispatchers were announcing it to callers).

The rumor has also been denied by the serial killer task force working on this case. "If the public was in any danger or if there was any truth to it, we would let the public know," serial killer task force spokeswoman Cpl. Mary Ann Godawa said. "We have no reason to believe this is true." They've posted a denial on their web site.

In September 2002 America's Most Wanted devoted a segment to the hunt for south Louisiana's serial killer, showing re-enactments of the first three murders. In January 2003 it aired an update to the story, this time focusing on the November 2002 slaying of Trineisha Colomb, the fourth victim. The airing of that update appears to have provoked a further wave of rumor.

We also looked through news archives in search of items relating to serial killers operating elsewhere who were using tape-recorded baby cries to draw potential victims away from the safety of their homes and found nothing. If any serial killer anywhere is (or was) doing this, there's been nothing about it in the news.

It's likely this current "Don't open the door!" warning is an expression of the anxiety the Baton Rouge serial killer provoked in that community, told in the form of a story that borrows a motif from a more traditional urban legend, the venerable Roommate's Death. That cautionary tale also requires the threatened female to not open the door lest she admit the killer, and the current "crying baby" warning carries an additional resonance from the Boyfriend's Death legend in the detail of a police officer's commanding the frightened woman to not look back at the car she'd just spent the night in.

[Dr T Non-Fan]

I saw that in a Karate leaflet.

[Actuary321]

Originally Posted by Cynic

From an e-mail...sorry if you've seen this before.

Here is a link to Snopes for the crying baby item.

And I live in Utah when Bundy was around and don't remember the cane/limp thing, though I could be wrong. I thought there was something about him faining a broken down car though.

[The Drunken Actuary]

Originally Posted by Cynic

From an e-mail...sorry if you've seen this before.

Did you clear this with Shekky first?

[Actuary321]

I want a do over. Someone walked in on me while I was trying to post and caused me to have to work instead of getting my post in ahead of Big Ed.

Originally Posted by The Drunken Actuary

Did you clear this with Shekky first?

I don't belong in Political, so Shekky means nothing to me.

(Unless he's the guy who just disapproved all my rate filings, then he can go to you-know-where).

[Mr. Grim]

Buy and learn how to fire a small handgun. Aim for the kneecaps or the nuts.

[Rosebud]

Originally Posted by Mr. Grim

Buy and learn how to fire a small handgun. Aim for the kneecaps or the nuts.

That's a little serious just for turning down your rate filings. We usually just try to get the Commissioner the added info he needs and refile.

If that doesn't work, then we turn to small arms.

[Maxprime]

Best thing a woman can do to prevent being raped is take Brazilian JuJitsu. I have trained with women who will break both of your arms and choke you out if you ever got on the ground with them.

As for standing up tips - I'm a little guy but I've done some full contact fighting and picked up a few things along the way:
1) As stated above, elbows are very good. HOWEVER, the best weapon on the human body is the knee. They are the most dangerous weapons imagineable. An attacker is going to be close to you where you can't kick him, if you knee him in the groin or face - he's down for the count.
2) Take a self defense class - you spend an hour a night for a few weeks and can beat the living hell out of anyone who attacks you. In the JuJitsu world - we say, "An extended (attacking) limb is a broken one".
3) Just be aware at all times. I am a pretty well built guy and have trained a very good amount at full contact fighting with Thai Boxers and BJJ World Champions - but if two or three guys jump me I'm still in a lot of danger. Watch to see if anyone is following you, if you do it often enough it will become second nature.
4) This is controversial, but my girlfriend can put down a robber at 15 yards with a 9mm very effectively. ARM YOURSELF if you believe in it. Women today are getting more and more Concealed Handgun permits - which legally requires you get training on how to safely fire and carry a weapon. I realize this may not be everyone's route - but if you'll look in the news at the six people that were killed over an Xbox, owning a gun seems like a pretty good idea.

That's all I can think of for now, whenever I'm home I take back all the new techniques I learn and do a rape prevention and escape seminar to my female friends. I highly suggest you find a school in your area, it can and will save your life - just do a seminar where they teach you how to escape a rear naked choke and all the standard attacks that someone is going to try on you.