I just got an email (from someone I know well and trust) about an incident that supposedly happened very recently at our local shopping centre. Maybe I’ve been reading too many hoaxes on this site, but it smelled fishy. Has anyone heard this before or is it a genuine case?

Please be very careful. This happened to a friends work colleague
>
>Last Thursday night a lady went shopping in the Plaza and parked her
car
>in the new section under Harris Farm. When she returned she found her
>back window had been smashed in her car. A well dressed man in a suit
>approached her and said he noticed her window, and that his car had
>actually been stolen.
>
>He asked her that since this had happened they should go to the police
>station and report it, but she told him that the police probably
wouldn’t
>be interested as this stuff happens all the time, and she would just
get
>her Husband to call when she got home.
>
>As her Husband was cleaning out the broken glass in the car, he found 4

>items, a rope, duct tape, a knife and a hammer. They went straight to
>Penrith Police and reported it.
>
>The woman was upset, as she found the man in the car park was helpful
and
>seemed like a decent person, and she had actually contemplated going
>with him to the Police, since he had no car to get there. He was well
>dressed and she hadn’t thought for a second that she was in any
>danger….....
>
>Please tell as many people as you know, as no one wants to hear of
>someone they know actually going with this man. Next time, they may not

>be so lucky….....

I was unable to find this one specifically over at Snopes, but if you do a search for car + abduction you find a lot of similar things.  (I’ll admit to not searching Snopes very hard - and not being good at doing searches in the first place.)  Most of these things are generally false.  I say “generally” because they usually have at least some truth to them, though usually just the most basic details.

I did find this story and Snopes has a paragraph there that I think sums up things very nicely.

Crime warnings are generally a good thing

Why would the guy leave the knife in the back seat of her car, if he planned on abducting her?  It would be hard to reach there.  If he was wearing a suit, he could have easily kept it on himself.

^^What Acci says.

I don’t recognize the names of the locations, but in the US, you wouldn’t bring your vandalized car to the police.  You leave it where it is, and call them out to YOU.  And…if someone’s car had just been stolen, they wouldn’t be asking for a ride to the police station, again they would be calling the police to THEIR location & also probably trying to find someone to take them home after (like a spouse, family member, friend, or taxi).

So…*if* there was an incident where a woman walked out to her car & had the window broken, it would never occur to her to drive up to the police station with a huge-ass hole in her car.  (Let alone a huge asshole! )  Or at least, in my experience, people w/ vandalized cars do not drive their cars out to the police, they sit & wait for them, thinking the police will take finger prints, or do some CSI magic or something…when they don’t.  They document the damage, & give you a copy of their documentation.

I have heard this one.  Very similar stories:

http://www.snopes.com/horrors/madmen/hairyarm.asp

Thanks guys, I thought it sounded familiar. btw I’m in Aus, I don’t know if you would take the car to the police, I probably wouldn’t bother, just call in a report when I got home. And yeah, I thought it odd that the tools were in the car, not in a bag or whatever.

I think I will get a chance to talk to the person who sent it on Sunday, so I’ll ask her then if it really was “someone at work” or if she received the email and helpfully passed it on.

If the latter I will assume hoax.

If anything suspious or unusal happens, always report it.  As I told a patient today see my butt it is well covered