3 car loads of guys at 3 am pull up? (read scenario first)

[Thin Black Line]

Scenario:

You just got back from a deployment to a Middle Eastern warzone not too
long ago. Your last official residence and hometown as reported to the local
newspaper was your old address you no longer live at. You recently learn
from the current occupants that at about 3:00am one evening 3 carloads of
guys pull up in front of their house and begin conversing loud enough in
ARABIC to wake them up. In fact, they pretty much just hang out in the
middle of the street for a few minutes, but never actually set foot on the
private property next to it before leaving. There's no other traffic at this
time of morning in the small neighborhood and the next closest area that has
a known subpopulation of middle eastern origin is 20 miles away. The current
occupants, although rudely awaken, do nothing more than tell you and a few
friends about it.

Your reactions if you were the person who just returned to the states, but
not living at that address.....

 

[crofrog]

I voted 4 but would also do 2 and 3

 

[Oldtimer]

#1: How did those people know that it was Arabic that the group were speaking? Heck, it could have been a group of Jews speaking Hebrew! Maybe they were returning from a Bar Mitzfah and got lost?

#2: The time of the incident is somewhat odd, but not entirely so. They may have departed from a late night party, and the lead vehicle in the convoy back to their own area was confused.

#3: About the only law that they broke was "Disturbing the peace", due to their loud voices at a late hour.

I seriously doubt if the incident had anything to do with you having previously lived at that residence. If a similar incident takes place, THAT'S when you might start wondering what is going on.

Still, it might not hurt for those folks to contact the local police. The LEAST they would do might be to give them some extra patrol time. I think that it would also be good to notify the other residents in the area of the incident.

 

[ball3006]

If you no longer live at...

that address, what is the problem.......chris3

 

[hso]

That's an implausble scenario.

 

[FPrice]

Unless (and this is a big if) I had some other reason to be concerned about harassment or some sort of retaliation, I would do nothing. But I would advise the current occupants to notify the police if they were concerned.

With just these few "facts" there seems to be nothing to get paranoid about.

 

[lastcavalier]

+1 on ensuring proper language identification. Since most Americans aren't used to Semitic languages, they have trouble telling them apart. Could've been Hebrew (as was mentioned) or Farsi, or whatever. Further, some Americans have trouble even distinguishing major language groups, and might have confused Hindi or Russian, or who knows what else.

If one assumes these guys were coming to exact some sort of vengeance upon you for your activities in the Middle East (which I'm assuming is what you'd be worried about in this situation), you're assuming that they have the sort of intelligence network to get this information from your area of operations in the ME to this operating cell in America. With that sort of network, one would assume they had some semblance of training. If so, do you think they'd be careless enough to roll up 3 cars deep, jump out and just start frightening the locals?

I'm with the others, I wouldn't get very worked up about the incident.

 

[OrvilleYertleson]

Me? I wouldn't do anything. The safety of the new occupants is their responsibility and they chose to do nothing.

In all likeliness it would be either a coincidence, or just a bunch of teenageers (every culture has them, I'm told) who picked what they believed was your house to play a prank on and failed to follow through.

I think it is seriously unlikely that you would be the first target of three carloads of terrorists. Why would you risk conspiring with a large number of people and then choose the underwhelming target of....you, one single person. Also, if the people who drove up intended to do harm to you they would probably have broken into the house at the very least before they realized you were no longer there.

Of course, a soldier is probably more at risk simply because he is a returning soldier. The bad guys don't have to know the details of what he did in Iraq (unless he caught saddam or something) to paint him as a target.

 

[Mannlicher]

this will get locked before too long, I hope.

 

[Bob F.]

lastcav: read the post: "local newspaper". Admittedly, not very reliable intelligence, but....

Option #3, just to be safe, but not really too concerned!

Bob

 

[Kamicosmos]

Is there a full moon or something? Some really odd posts around here lately...

Edited to add: What the heck? I'll bite afterall. I'd be more worried about the fact that the new owners of the property tracked me down. That's more disturbing that the incident. I mean...MILLIONS of soldiers have returned home from overseas duty, and I bet there has never been an incident of one soldier being stalked, in the USA, by his former enemies. Well, outside of bad action movies, of course.

 

[Thin Black Line]

That's an implausble scenario.

Yeah, can't happen here....

I mean...MILLIONS of soldiers have returned home from overseas duty, and I bet there has never been an incident of one soldier being stalked, in the USA, by his former enemies.

Stalked to kill or stalked to intimidate?

In all likeliness it would be either a coincidence, or just a bunch of teenageers (every culture has them, I'm told) who picked what they believed was your house to play a prank on and failed to follow through.

Harmless teens like the ones in France or Australia?

this will get locked before too long, I hope.

Why? I've seen plenty of threads here about suspicious behavior, bad
neighbors, etc etc ad here before. What makes this situation
verbotten to discuss?

 

[Revolver Justice]

Get a few friends and wait for them and then have a nice talk, Southern Style. Just listen to the Charlie Daniels song "Simple Man", and you will know what I mean.

 

[skidmark]

I voted for "Other"

A few questions:
1) why are the new occupasnts telling me this?
2) what did I do over there that might make me any greater target than the next slob in line?
3) how long ago did this happen before the new occupants told me about it?
4) how/why do the new occupants know me to get hold of me and tell me this tale?
5) how much were the new occupants drinking before they told me this tale? (OK, that is not really fair. I will withdraw the lasat question. The jury is instructed to pay no attention to it and not consider any possiuble response to the question when deliberating.)

I have strong urges to put on my tin-foil hat over this one. If I am high-speed/low-drag enough to be of intertest to terrorists, they should not know about me, and if I'm high-profile enough I should have a security detail who would have loaded the body parts on a black helicopter and washed down the street before the new occupants even knew what was going on.

Now for real paranoia - how about your hometown paper publishing your picture and the citation for your Silver/Bronze Star, along with the typical "now residing in the xx-hundred block of XYZ Street"? I know of a few that had that happen after coming home from Vietnam. Most were just embarassed, but one had a "street performance group" from the local junior college show up one afternoon. They did not finish their "performance."

stay safe.

skidmark

 

[Master Blaster]

I'd be 99.99999% certain it had nothing to do with you living there. The folks who heard this are they from the middle east? Do they speak arabic???

Were they smoking something that caused them to order a lot of Pizzas?????

Were you???

Just becuase your paranoid doesnt mean someone isnt out to get you

 

[LaEscopeta]

#1: How did those people know that it was Arabic that the group were speaking? Heck, it could have been a group of Jews speaking Hebrew! Maybe they were returning from a Bar Mitzfah and got lost?

+1

And +1 on the above posts about not getting paranoid. There is not enough evidence to take any action or lose any sleep over.

On the other hand, if the current occupant of your former address does not mind keeping an eye out, this would not be a bad thing, and it would not harm the 3 carloads of people. Who knows? If they are troublemakers, maybe they are after the current occupant, and not you.

And I don’t think making a suspicious activity report to the local police will necessarily harm the 3 carloads of people, since the police will not know who they are. On the other hand, if there have been or will be other incidents of rocks thrown at houses, hateful graffiti, etc, your report may help in police investigations.

 

[EmGeeGeorge]

"Get a few friends and wait for them and then have a nice talk, Southern Style. Just listen to the Charlie Daniels song "Simple Man", and you will know what I mean." ???

You mean if some dude kills your wife and kids you'll get a .44 and kill 'em, after being failed by the CJ system? I don't see the connection... to the song that is.

+1 for the overall paranoid vibe...

 

[Revolver Justice]

The song was used to illustrate on how to handle a bunch of people trying to stalk you and your family by default. The part about tying them a tree stump and letting the gattors have at them seems like a good idea. Nothing is to extreme when it comes to defending your family.

 

[Sheldon J]

True story

In Phoenix at a gated apartment complex my son went to the laundry, where he bumped into and was informed by a group of approximately 6 Arabic types that if he was smart he would leave immediately. Let me tell you the boy carries a .38, is 6’7” and 390 lbs and pro wrestles for the fun of it. Not to be intimidated easily told them where to go and dialed a 911 on them. The police cuffed and hauled the lot of them away, they never did come back.

 

[WT]

Deleted: duplicate

 

[WT]

I seem to recall that the captain of the USS VINCENNES had his personal vehicle blown up in California. His wife was injured. Some may remember that the USS VINCENNES shot down Iran Air Flight 655, a civilian jetliner.

I think its conceivable that some foreigners hold a grudge against US military personnel and may follow them home to work out that grudge.

 

[Thin Black Line]

Let's assume the new occupants are: non-drinkers/non-smokers and
have grown up in the same hometown.

As far as history lessons: groups murdering US military personnel are
not "unknown" (Turkey in the early 90s); I can only recall one possible
incident here in the US, even made a little news at the time (car bombing
of a wife's vehicle). The husband felt it was a retaliation hit from his
high-profile "travel" in the ME, but the FBI did not. The local LEA felt
it was one of the "hundreds" of pipe bombings that happen across
their county every year.....I really did not imagine that pipe bombings
of cars were "common" in any part of the country

In any case, sounds like most people would agree overall that one
incident of suspicious activity is chance, but twice......maybe not.

 

[Thin Black Line]

WT,

We must've had the same history class --was typing my response when
you posted yours

 

[WT]

TBL - great minds 'remember' alike!

The USN captain's name was William C. Rogers III. I don't recall how the bombing was resolved - if the FBI ever caught the BG's.

I had forgotten about the problems in Turkey. My neighbor's daughter was stationed there with the USAF when things started going haywire. I remember my neighbor's concern for her.

 

[psyopspec]

I voted that they should let me know if anything else happens. That, and I'd ask them to write down every detail they remembered of the first incident.