Women hear about bad things that happen to other women all of the time. But I, like many others, forget that these things could happen to me. Luckily, when I was kidnapped by a taxi driver on Friday night, I had my cell phone on me.
The phone only had battery power because I’d shut it off earlier that night when I saw it only had one bar. I thought to myself, “You don’t want to have a dead phone in case of an emergency.”
Thank god I thought that because six hours later, I was calling 911 on a taxi driver who refused to let me out of his car. I’d tried to use my debit card to pay for our ride, but he claimed his machine was not working. I requested to try again and he began to grow angry with me, shouting, “This is your problem! Not my problem!”
When I finally told the man that this was actually HIS problem, he child locked all of the doors in the car and sped off with me, screaming about how he would just take me to the police station. This was all quite baffling to me. After all, I had my card in my hand and was ready and willing to pay for the cab right there if his machine would work.
I tried everything I could to unlock the doors. They wouldn’t budge. I was pounding on the glass between the driver’s seat and mine. I put my head through the hole in the glass to tell him to stop the car and he raised his hand to hit me; luckily, I moved away. At this point, I grabbed my phone and called 911.
Once he realized I was serious about calling 911 and that this situation would only escalate if he didn’t pull over, he finally stopped the car. Conveniently enough, he stopped the car next to a police car stationed on the street with two officers on duty.
The officers let me out of the car and we found out his machine was, in fact, working just fine. What happens next will be decided by court. However, I really wonder what would have happened had I not saved my battery power and had my cell phone on me to call 911 and show the driver that I wasn’t about to put up with his bullsh*t.
Please let this be a lesson to all of you out there, particularly the women, to always have your cell phones on hand (and charged) just in case.
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