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Claim: Houston police are looking for robbers who use their vehicles to bump the cars of their victims.
Example: [Collected via e-mail, 2004]
Origins: It's 
incidents like this one that point out the pitfalls of forwarding "Send this to everyone you know!" crime warnings The robberies described above were real, but the perpetrators are now in the hands of the law. During a three-hour, thirteen-minute span on
One woman — 7½ months pregnant — was robbed of her purse and vehicle as she arrived for work in downtown Houston and parked her car. Her Chevrolet Trailblazer was later used in some of the other robberies and has yet to be recovered. Other drivers were robbed when the perpetrators bumped their vehicles from behind (sometimes while the cars were moving, and sometimes while they were halted at stop signs). When the drivers stepped out of their cars to investigate, the robbers held them at gunpoint and demanded their money, their car keys, and sometimes their cell phones (the latter two to keep the victims from giving chase or calling police). The same criminals also robbed one woman of her purse while she was walking to work. Each of the three young men responsible for this spree (ages 18, 18, and 19) gave a videotaped confession and implicated himself or his partners in the crimes. As to what prompted this sudden crime wave, according to a robbery investigator who worked the case, the three young men were bored and saw the morning's work as entertainment. The situation has been resolved in Houston. However, motorists everywhere should still exercise caution if their vehicles are rammed, because this ploy has often been used to lure unsuspecting victims from the safety of their cars, either to rob them or to rape them. Stay aware. Barbara "well reared" Mikkelson Last updated: 3 March 2006 Urban Legends Reference Pages © 1995-2009 by snopes.com. This material may not be reproduced without permission. snopes and the snopes.com logo are registered service marks of snopes.com.  Sources:
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