A.C. Efverman
I first came to Australia as a backpacker year 1994, and I landed in Perth. I was travelling alone, and one day I went to the beach - it was a windy mid-week day and the beach was empty; in fact it was so windy I had to take shelter among the sand dunes, and I had been sitting there for a while reading when I saw a guy, he looked to be about my own age, come running down a sand dune straight towards me.
I remember thinking that the guy was good looking, and that it was strange he was running straight towards me; but he wasn't looking at me. When he reached me he took a gun from his shorts pocket and held it to my head. I just froze in sheer terror. But then the guy looked at something behind me and I turned my head slightly and saw a middle aged man come jogging towards us on the beach below. The younger guy then suddenly put the gun back into his shorts pocket, turned his back on me and ran back up the sand dune. I sat there until he had disappeared out of sight, and then I grabbed my stuff and ran down onto the beach, but there was no one there; the middle aged man was nowhere to be seen, so I kept running on the beach until I reached a kiosk; where I asked the owner if I could use his phone to call the police. The police came and they took me in their police car and cruised the area for a while, to see if the young man or the middle aged man were still around, but when we realized they weren't around, the police men took me to a police station; where they asked me questions about what had happened, and they also asked me what the two men looked like. When I described the young guy and the middle aged man, the police told me that both of these men were suspects in a string of rapes on young women that had occurred in the local area under gun point. This was confusing to me; as I thought the young guy had been scared off by the middle aged man, but one theory was that the middle aged man was running towards us to give the younger guy a sign that someone else was approaching.
Anyway, I will never know. - I left Perth shortly after this incident, and I have never gone back there. When I moved to Australia year 1996, I heard on the news that young women had gone missing in that same area in Perth, and it was later revealed that their bodies were found in shallow graves.
Of course I feel very relieved to have escaped unharmed from this ordeal, but what happened that day on the beach actually triggered my interest in writing crime fiction novels - and I use my memories of feeling terrified, helpless and exposed when I describe what the victims in my books go through.
You can hear me talk/ read more about this ordeal in these interviews:
Radio interview by Blog Talk Radio (USA): http://www.blogtalkradio.com/dialogue...
Interview by American entertainment blogger Bee Ordiway: https://baileybee.me/2016/07/06/an-in...
I remember thinking that the guy was good looking, and that it was strange he was running straight towards me; but he wasn't looking at me. When he reached me he took a gun from his shorts pocket and held it to my head. I just froze in sheer terror. But then the guy looked at something behind me and I turned my head slightly and saw a middle aged man come jogging towards us on the beach below. The younger guy then suddenly put the gun back into his shorts pocket, turned his back on me and ran back up the sand dune. I sat there until he had disappeared out of sight, and then I grabbed my stuff and ran down onto the beach, but there was no one there; the middle aged man was nowhere to be seen, so I kept running on the beach until I reached a kiosk; where I asked the owner if I could use his phone to call the police. The police came and they took me in their police car and cruised the area for a while, to see if the young man or the middle aged man were still around, but when we realized they weren't around, the police men took me to a police station; where they asked me questions about what had happened, and they also asked me what the two men looked like. When I described the young guy and the middle aged man, the police told me that both of these men were suspects in a string of rapes on young women that had occurred in the local area under gun point. This was confusing to me; as I thought the young guy had been scared off by the middle aged man, but one theory was that the middle aged man was running towards us to give the younger guy a sign that someone else was approaching.
Anyway, I will never know. - I left Perth shortly after this incident, and I have never gone back there. When I moved to Australia year 1996, I heard on the news that young women had gone missing in that same area in Perth, and it was later revealed that their bodies were found in shallow graves.
Of course I feel very relieved to have escaped unharmed from this ordeal, but what happened that day on the beach actually triggered my interest in writing crime fiction novels - and I use my memories of feeling terrified, helpless and exposed when I describe what the victims in my books go through.
You can hear me talk/ read more about this ordeal in these interviews:
Radio interview by Blog Talk Radio (USA): http://www.blogtalkradio.com/dialogue...
Interview by American entertainment blogger Bee Ordiway: https://baileybee.me/2016/07/06/an-in...
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