A stranger threatened to "shoot" me today when I was with my child. was I being unreasonable to call 999?

[BlackFriYay]

I was on my way to collect DC from school, toddler was with me on reins. The seats were full so we went upstairs where there was only a few seats left, next to other passengers.

I sat on the nearest one and put toddler on my knee, I didn't pay any attention to who I was sitting next to as i was sitting sideways with my feet in the aisle and my back to the person occupying the window seat. Toddler was squirming a bit and wanted to get down so as soon as another double seat became available we moved across there.

A man sitting in the area we moved from started playing loud music through his phone, some daft parody song on repeat.

As our stop approached I got up, lifted the little one and was walking towards the stairs, past the strange bloke with the music. As I passed him he said not to ever sit next to him again or he'll shoot me in the face. Confused as hell, I looked up as we got to the stairs to see if he was talking to me and he was. He then said "oh is that a woman?" IE me, then added "never mind I'm still going to do it" whilst making shot gun gestures toward me.

I couldn't get down the stairs quick enough and tried to tell the driver what had happened but he could barely hear me through the plastic. I didn't want a scene I just wanted to get as far away from the prick as I could.

In a panic I called 999 which I'm not sure was the right thing to do or not, perhaps 101 would have been more appropriate. They've made an appointment to come and see me at home on Tuesday which is the earliest appointment they have.

I asked whether they're going to make any attempt to look for the man as he seems dangerous threatening lone women with children. They said they'd circulate his description and If any officers see him they will talk to him?!

Do you think that is sufficient? Am I blowing this way out of proportion?

I felt so, so vulnerable and scared but they don't seem to think it's anything major.

@Speckledpasta Im not talking about me as it wasn’t me. I wouldn’t have called 999 but I just don’t believe I can judge the OP as I wasn’t there. The OP felt threatened & she has definitely been shaken by the experience hence the thread. And why don’t you try answering the question about identifying the harmful nutters & the harmless ones?

Of course YNBU. A man threatened to shoot you whilst you were with your child. Who else were you supposed to call for help? He needs to face the consequences of his actions.

Hope you're doing OK.

At first I thought you were a bit over the top. But actually the more I think about it you did the right thing. Who knows if he carried a gun, and even if he didn't he should never make threats like that especially unprovoked.

You never know, if he's as vulnerable/ mentally unwell as some "local characters" can be this report might be very important for SS or other police enquiries.

Hope you are okay love! And your toddler!!

You would have to believe that it was going to be carried out and you were in danger of being killed by this stranger.

From what you've said, doesn't sound like that happened.

It was a 4a public order offence. The mere use of the word kill does not make it a threat to kill.

Report it to the bus company, the police will ask for the footage. Make a statement if you're willing to go to court. Unless there is sound or a witness it will your word vs his.

There should be CCTV on the bus so they should be able to see it, get in touch with the bus company and request the video or ask the police do immediately as don't know how long it's kept. You did the right thing 💐

I personally think it’s incredibly aggressive to threaten to shoot a women with a toddler in the face. I bet he wouldn’t have done it to a man.

I would have just ignored it and carried on with my day. Just because I'm used to seeing that behaviour around.

I understand if you've not had the experience of seeing and hearing all sorts like then it might be scary for you.

But I do think YABU to ring 999. It will be a waste of their and your time.
They won't find him and they won't do anything about it.

There are too many people around who will talk like that. The police can't do anything even if they have cctv off the bus.

I dunno..I did see a lot of bad /strange behaviour on public transport when I was living there but “only” one extreme threat and that was by a young woman who threatened to Stab another woman on the overground train to Richmond. I wouldn’t say threats like the one you received, while not completely unheard of, are exactly commonplace either - especially when made to a woman travelling with kids.

My worst experience was when I was actually assaulted on the tube once on my way to work. I wasn’t even that bothered about the assault it was the fact the woman lied and tried to get me arrested by saying I started it and it was my first week in a new job. so I arrived 2 hours late after questioning by police and had a panic attack when I got home later that day. I don’t live in London and now WFH but I don’t miss all that.

The PP wasn't saying that she personally felt worried late at night; that's fair enough.

She was saying that public transport is so dangerous that it maybe doesn't make sense for the government to promote it. That is objectively silly, given how much more dangerous car use is to their occupants and the general public.

Ok so you were just arguing for the sake of it then 🙄

I did answer the question, again in a previous response you are conveniently ignoring.

You know statistically your husband/partner is most likely to kill you by miles, don't you?

The young man that threw that poor boy off the roof of the Tate Modern was seriously mentally ill and had threatened to do it before and should never have been allowed out in public.

Perhaps more should be done about obviously dangerous mentally ill people walking the streets unsupervised? Just because services are stretched and the Police probably won’t do anything about it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be reported.

The OP was scared. She did the right thing.

I've just spent 15 minutes writing all of this out to TFL to get this error message. Great.

It is so so rare for this to happen. Are you equally as worried about other extremely rare events? Do you never use lifts in case they fail, not go outside in case you are struck by lightning etc...

I'm glad you reported it.

Seems simple enough to me. You should have got the plate but the bus co will know which bus and driver were completing the route at that time. They will then get camera footage and see if they can identify him. Getting the police to actually do that will be near impossible but you can try.

You were right to report it. The guy is either an absolute cunt or mentally ill. He shouldn't be acting that way and if he faced some consequence (or got support) maybe it would stop so many people behaving this way.

Although tfl buses have real time tracking, it’s somewhat spotty and unreliable and I doubt they keep the information to look at retrospectively. So unless it was a route that only ran once an hour, maybe half hour, the exact time a bus of a certain number was at a certain stop is, I would have thought, unlikely to be sufficient to identify the actual bus.

I don’t think you were wrong to call 999 as it’s likely the only opportunity to catch the man would have been if there was an officer available right then there. It’s a shame there wasn’t.

I see this sort of thing as a bit like flashing - upsetting but not immediately physically dangerous, but still something that needs stomping on to ensure a civil society and to stop escalation to things that are physically dangerous. So worthy of some effort, but not huge resources for each incident.

Of course they are rare but in the Tate Modern case there were warnings and it was an entirely preventable situation which ended in tragedy for a young boy and his family.

Possibly the man on this bus will actually go through with his threats next time?

I wrote the initial post!

my point in the follow up is people have reasons for not using public transport. Issues with aggressive behaviour late at night is just one example, as things seem to be more extreme then but it can happen during the day too.

I’ve mentioned in a later post and my initial post incidents I’ve witnessed or heard of from friends that have happened during the day, including one in where I was assaulted by a woman.

Yes there may be greater risk at road accidents travelling by cars but I can still understand why a lot of people - especially people travelling alone do not want to use public transport to avoid the risk of strange or aggressive people making them on edge or outright frightened - such as men or women doing unsettling or intimidating things. Or even teens verbally abusing and ridiculing random people which I’ve heard of too. Just because it doesn’t end in a murder doesn’t mean these more minor incidents of anti- social and unsafe behaviour are not extremely unpleasant and unsettling. Again, I say this as a non driver.

Yes but it is about a proportionate distribution of resources, isn't it?

It wouldn't be proportionate for the police to investigate this incident for the reasons already discussed. If they did then they'd be diverting resources from something more pressing and higher risk, is that what you want? Also, again, there hasn't been an offense committed.

There absolutely has been an offence committed.

What was the offense?

Or could it be about they’re not being enough resources to go round? Is that the op’s fault?

Should people stop reporting offences because they don’t think there’s much chance of a conviction?

There has been an offence committed. The OP ran away, terrified! And tbh, even if you want to go down the route of her not thinking he was actually going to be murdered, the man at the very least committed a public order offence.

Using threatening, abusive words or behaviour. Section 5 of the public order act. At the least.

Youre being deliberately obtuse now. There would obviously never be enough resources to investigate every time someone was a bit weird or nasty. Even if we doubled the budget (and your taxes), and even if they were caught, what then?

It's good that very few people on MN are legislators or in positions of power, the world would go crazy

This. It is not illegal to say I will kill you / shoot you.
It couldn't be.
For it to be a crime there needs to be a reasonable belief they will do it and have the ability to do it.
Most people who even get yo court get off on the it's just rhetoric.
Seeing as he was a stranger and didn't point a gun at you I'm quite surprised the police are interested, especially round Croydon.