Wednesday, December 2, 2009

NOT a happy camper.

Yesterday was a shitty day. Fame and I ran some errands, and visited the farm stand that my mom's BFF works at. It's 3.2 miles from my house. I left the farm stand and drove home to drop Fame off, because I had to go the grocery store and didn't want him sitting in the car that long. I pull in the driveway, let him out of the car, close my door, and there's a chunk of paint missing from my door. Now, if you know how I am with my car (aka my 3rd baby after Marius and Fame), you'd know that I inspect it for damage damn near every time I go to get in it- when I leave the house, when I leave the store, etc. There was NO damage on it when I left the farm stand.

Upon examining this damage further, I realize that it looks like it was caused by a BB. At the top of the first image is the rubber seal right below my window.
Here is the route I took home (my house is A, the farm stand is B): Notice there's NOTHING there. The area between the farm stand and Hays Rd is pretty rural - houses are far apart, a few of them have horses. It's a 45 MPH road. Whoever shot me did it while I was driving home. If they had done it while I was parked at the 2 stops I went to, 1. I would have noticed the damage right away, 2. Fame would have indicated that something was amiss, since he was in the car, and 3. They would have probably hit the window, which is what kids with BB guns usually aim for. What scares me is that the BB hit the drivers door, about 3 inches below the window. If it had been a little higher, it would have shattered the window. If it passed through the window, it would have either hit me or Fame, since he was riding shotgun. It probably would have scared the shit out of me and may have caused me to go off the road and crash into something. They could have put my life, Marius' life, and/or Fame's life in jeopardy. I DO NOT take that lightly.

So now I'm pissed that someone could have hurt us, AND my car is messed up. The paint was missing right down to the steel, so it's not just a touch-up job. The whole door is going to have to be sanded and repainted. I called my mom and she didn't want to file an insurance claim to get it repaired because she didn't want our rate to go up. There's no way in hell I'm leaving the door like that, because the paint would continue to chip and bubble, and the door would rust. I decided to take my car down to the body shop for an estimate to see what it would cost out of pocket. I call my insurance company from the body shop to find out what my deductible is for my comprehensive coverage so I can compare it to the actual cost of the repair on the estimate and see which way I'd make out better. The insurance agent says I can open a claim and close it, that way if I decided to go the insurance route I can just pick right up where I left off. So I do that. Of course, the owner of the body shop confirms that the door, will in fact, have to be totally sanded and painted. Great. His estimate was $450. My deductible is $250. I don't even have $250 to my name, let alone the actual price of the repair. He throws some touch-up paint on the damage for me, just to seal it up a little until I figure out what I'm gonna do.

Fast forward. It's 11 pm. Hubby just turned in for the night, and I'm laying in bed reading. Our bedroom is on the wall adjacent to the driveway. We hear "POP POP POP" and a car going around the corner as my alarm starts to go off. Just fucking wonderful. Hubby jumps up, grabs his keys and heads out the door. I grab a weapon and head downstairs as my mom is calling the cops. I get outside to find that they shot out my rear window. It's still cracking and sounds like a bowl of Rice Krispies. These assholes were such poor marksmen that they managed to hit my spoiler at least 3 times in the process of aiming for the HUGE PANE OF GLASS on the other side of it. So now the paint on my spoiler is cracked, and it's gonna have to be totally sanded and painted along with my door. Great.


So we're outside and car pulls up to the corner, real slow, and I'm like "Oh HELL no" thinking these idiots came back to taunt me or something. I mean, I'm thinking this is something personal becuase they got me TWICE IN ONE DAY. But the car pulls up, and it's 2 kids from like 7 or 8 blocks up who just got hit too. So they stuck around until the cop showed up at our house. We see that my neighbor across the street got shot out, too. They didn't hear it and the cop had to go knock on their door and tell them. Apparently, about 100 cars got hit the previous night in the next town over, too. I guess they decided that wasn't enough and came through our neighborhood. They have to either live close to me or have been camped out somewhere close to me, because when I got shot the first time in broad daylight, it was on the same long stretch of road that our house is off of. I only passed one other car on the road on my way home, and it was a middle aged woman with both her hands on the steering wheel.

Anyway, the cop is really cool. My mom said that Tucker left in his green Toyota Camry to go after the guys who were shooting. The cop was like, "Oh yeah. I just pulled him over. He didn't have his lights on." Apparently, hubby started catching up to the "perps", cut his lights off to sneak up on them, and he was gonna ram them. Of course, HE gets pulled over for not having his lights on, and he didn't get close enough to get make/model/plate number or anything before the cop stopped him. He flashed his military ID at the cop and said "You need to be going after those guys- they just shot up my wife's car." Cop gets back in his car, but it's too late- they're gone already. I wish he had taken me with him, because he isn't too familiar with cars, but I could have identified the make/model based on the tail lights alone.

So get this - After the 2nd hit last night, I called the insurance company back and said, "My car got shot up AGAIN and I want to pursue the claim from earlier and add more damage." These assholes are telling me I have to pay the $250 deductible for the door, and ANOTHER $250 deductible for the rear window and spoiler, since they were a "separate incident". WTF?!?!?! I'm livid.

They better find these guys- it's not a good idea to piss off a pregnant woman by shooting up her car that is ranked in the top 5 things that are nearest and dearest to her heart.

2 comments:

Lindsey said...

You weren't lying when you said things have been hectic!
Keep us posted. You have me on the edge of my seat!

Lexie's thoughts said...

what a buncha scumbags. hope we dont get hit. EG is supposed to be such a "safe" place. Thats why our car got egged not too long ago & now we have a threat of our windshield getting smashed out. terrific!!