Flash said:
I borrowed my Dad's W220 yesterday and left it parked on my private driveway lats night.
At about 1.15AM this morning I heard the alarm sound and saw the idiot running away from the car. I could quite clearly see that the drivers side window had been smashed. I decided to give chase and was still in my jeans/t shirt at the time as I was watching a DVD downstairs with my girl friend.
I managed to catch the bastard and a fight broke out and he pulled out a knife on me and I got it out of his hand and threw it into someone's garden so that he could not use it on me and after that I got the better of him. He then pulls out a screw driver and tried to stab it into my heart/chest area but I managed to defend myself and "really" went for him and pinned him down till Police arrived (my girl friend called them from her mobile as she came running out shortly after I gave chase). His been arrested BUT has said that I pulled the knife put on him and the Police are being "sympathetic" towards him as he also has alot marks on his face!!! I'm lucky that I did not get hurt myself/or even got killed and that my girl frined was there who has given a statement supporting me and what actually happned
However, I have been relased upon bail pending further enquires...
Just be carfeul guys if something like this was to happen to yourselves...
Sorry to hear your news; I guess most of us have had cars broken into and the desire to meter out a little justice on the thieving Ratboys is sometimes hard to resist. However I personally think you were wrong to attempt to pursue / apprehend the scumbag, and I'll try to explain why.
In 2001, I was on the motorway heading for home and needed fuel for my car. It was pretty late (3am on a Sunday morning) and the roads were fairly quiet. I drove for twenty or so miles with the fuel light on and pulled into the first services I came to.
At the pumps, I was the only customer and I parked up close to the kiosk to avoid arousing any suspicion that I might do a runner without paying. The pump clicked on and I started filling up the car.
Across the service road there was a grass embankment and just out of sight I could hear a few people swearing and cursing, as well as a woman screaming. It sounded quite serious, so I put the fuel nozzle back and locked my car, before quickly explaining to the attendant that I'd heard someone in distress and that he should probably call the police. He shouted something like "Okay, be careful" and I sprinted over to where the noise was coming from.
Basically, two guys were laying viciously into a woman of about 25, who was lying on the floor trying to protect herself. She was partially clothed (jeans and bra, but no top or coat) and she was bleeding. This was about 100 yards away from the kiosk and out of the light, but within the grounds of the services. At the time - in the few seconds prior to reacting to what I could see - I'd assumed that the folk were Irish travellers because there was a flatbed truck with a large caravan hitched up to it and their accents were particularly strong and hard to understand. Anyway, this woman appeared to be in pretty serious trouble.
My instinctive reaction was to run towards them shouting and trying to appear as intimidating as possible. I'm 6'3", my head is shaven and I'm largely built (18-stone), so I was hoping that my appearance alone would cause a little confusion and allow the woman to escape, but in actual fact the two fellas carried on shouting and kicking her!
Against my better judgement (it's hard to be rational at times like this, I'll admit...) I waded in and shoulder-charged into the guy closest to me, who lost his balance and hit the floor, face first. The other guy immediately sprang towards me and despite his relative size (probably about 5'10" and 12-stone), he was a hard little b*stard! My recently-fixed nose cracked after the third or fourth punch and had I not hit him with a lucky swing, I reckon he'd have done me some damage
Anyway, all this happened in very little time and he backed off, holding his face in his hands. The other guy was still on the floor (this is the first and only time I've ever shoulder-charged anyone unconscious!) and the woman who I thought I was helping was swearing and cursing. At me....
Anyway to cut a long story short, I was arrested at the scene and taken in a van to a police station about three or four miles away. The two guys and the woman had claimed that I'd simply interfered in a family argument (she was their sister!!!) and that her own injuries had come from a boyfriend earlier in the evening. Worse still, the guy at the kiosk denied/forgot hearing what I'd said and told police that one minute I'd been filling my car, and the next I was running across the forecourt towards the hills. Unfortunately the CCTV footage obtained later appeared to confirm this (no sound
) and it all started to look very bad for me. And to cap it all, my nose was bent around my face and I'd lost a tooth......And I'd just stopped for petrol...
I was charged with assault, the case went on for a few weeks and eventually I learned to my relief that the whole thing was to be dropped. I was never offered a proper explanation as to why, but my solicitor reckoned that the travellers had probably had second thoughts about going through the whole thing as witnesses, and so that was that. Ten months later I had my second nose-job and my tooth fixed, all of which was painful and expensive...
Anyway, the point was that during all the furore over my arrest and before the assault charge was brought, one of the police officers who'd attended the scene advised me that unless I was privy to a criminal incident in which someone's life was plainly
immediately at risk, it was advisable to remove oneself to a safe distance, call the police and avoid any confrontation. He pointed out that because thieves and other criminals were constantly at risk of being apprehended by members of the public, it was generally the rule (rather than the exception) that they would carry some kind of dangerous weapon with which to protect themselves from the possibility of arrest and of course prison. It made me think about the the two guys who'd been beating up their sister - what if they'd had knives or even guns (and with hindsight, they looked like the types who would have...)..? Whichever way I look at it, it just wasn't worth the aggro in my case, even though I'd thought the woman
was in danger.........
Like I said, it's bad news when our property is damaged or violated by thieving scum, and I can understand your anger
completely. BUT, if you had been lying cold on a slab today, imagine how your girlfriend would feel. Imagine how your old man would feel, knowing that you gave your life for his broken window..........a morbid thought I admit, but surely something to consider? We all like to think we're big and tough sometimes and that we should give these a$$holes a taste of real justice, but in truth none of us is tough enough to prevent a sufficiently-determined, armed thief from seriously injuring or even killing us.
Be glad that you're alive. Get the window fixed. Please don't be an (unnecessary) hero ever again.
Thanks for listening
You can see where I was coming from. 
