Monday, May 17, 2021 around 7:30am on the way to bring the kids to school, I stopped at the Race Trac on Old Hammond Highway (between N. Harrells Ferry and Cedarcrest). I got out and began pumping gas at pump 18. All of a sudden I felt an exploding pain in the back of my head and gas went spraying everywhere.
I turned around and saw the back of a black male running away from me with a pole or some sort of stick in his hand. He was running out of the parking lot towards N. Harrells Ferry in the direction of Sherwood Forest Blvd. I started screaming and pointing to him.
There was a white truck with a white guy inside the truck who had just turned into the parking lot. I’m not sure if he saw anything but he started yelling at me to call 911. He kept driving and it was then I noticed a skinny white girl with blonde hair, dyed blue walking in between my pump and the one across from it. She walked back and forth a couple times staring at me before taking off walking.
By this time, I had gotten my phone from the car and was dialing 911. A bus driver stopped with her bus and tried to talk to me while I was on the phone with 911 but eventually drove away. My head behind my right ear was bruised and swollen and I had to visit the ER and have a CAT scan done. My head hurt for a week.
The policemen who came out to my call were very rude and disrespectful. I felt I was the criminal instead of the victim of a crime with the way they talked to me. It was a week before they assigned a detective to my case. He called and spoke to me in June saying he was going to look at the tapes from Race Trac and it wasn’t until July when they asked me to come in and give a statement.
By this point, I had given up on the BRPD. Almost every time I called the week after the incident (to see if they had gotten any leads or had assigned a detective), the officers I spoke with were condescending and rude.
A Race Trac representative named —– from the corporate office in Georgia called me (after my husband and I tagged Race Trac on Facebook) and promised to send the videotapes of the pump I was at (pump 18) to the police. When I spoke with the BRPD detective, he said the tape was too blurry and it was too dark to see anything. He said she must have sent the wrong one. When I spoke to Race Trac afterwards, she said she did send the correct tape but included an hour or two before the incident. I never saw the tape. There is a tree at Race Trac that is directly in line with pump 18.
I got pretty frustrated with BRPD for taking so long to ask me to come in and give a statement that I didn’t feel it was worth it. Especially when it was July and the detective was still saying he didn’t have the right tape from Race Trac, like he had not even followed up with Race Trac on getting it. When he called in July asking me to come in and give a statement, we were getting ready to move and again, I just didn’t feel it would do any good at that point. I felt like the police did not really care whether it got solved.
My husband had tracked the girl with blue hair I mentioned earlier in my story the day of the incident. He recorded her talking but we’re pretty sure she was lying. She claims she was doing drugs behind the nail shop on Old Hammond (across from Race Trac) when she heard screaming and came over to see what was going on and she said she saw a guy running away but did not recognize him. She gave her name as Angelle but when my husband passed her on other days after he spoke to her, he tried calling her name but she never even turned her head. She would stand and beg/panhandle the at Sherwood/I12 exit. I don’t know if she was working with the guy who hit me but it seems very likely.
I had a lady reach out to me via Facebook who said she runs several sober living houses in that area and she knows behavior of addicts and she believes they were trying to rob me based on my story.
As for a message to others, I would say to be very aware of your surroundings. I had used that gas station many, many times and never considered it to be a dangerous area. That morning, I did get lost in thought while pumping gas, just watching traffic go by on Old Hammond, and that’s when it happened. So always be aware and cautious when anywhere in Baton Rouge!
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