A Florida family is sending a stern warning to travelers arriving in crime-ridden Oakland, California, where their car was broken into while dropping their teenager off at college.
The family was in town to enroll Rhomel Crossman, who had just graduated from high school in Florida, at Lincoln University in downtown Oakland, where he planned to play football.
Now, Crossman’s family says they plan to retire because they are too traumatized to leave him in Oakland for school.
His mother, Nerissa Murray Watson, said KTVU“In Oakland, California, you have to be careful.” Everything has completely disappeared.’
His family flew into the city over the weekend and rented a car to get around town before driving to downtown Oakland to register Rhomel at school.
A Florida family was robbed on their first day in Oakland, where they were visiting to enroll their son in college.
On Saturday night they left the car parked a block from the school to go pick up dinner at a local restaurant.
They were only gone for 15 minutes, they say, before returning to find the windows of the white Nissan Rogue they rented smashed and handing over suitcases full of stolen valuables.
“They took three thousand dollars in a bag that my husband put under the seat along with three passports, social security cards and my son’s high school diploma and birth certificate,” Murray Watson said.
The police told him to file a report in person at the police station, but he knows his efforts will probably not bear fruit.
“To me, it’s illegal because we even called the police three times and they told us they couldn’t come,” he said.
“I didn’t know these things happen in America, so it’s very strange to me.”
Beyond the hard-to-replace documents the family lost, one member had a sleep apnea machine stolen.
Coren Leslie-Green, Crossman’s aunt, who accompanied them on the trip, said she is starting to feel the impact of being without her medical device.
“Now I start to feel like my heart is pounding in the morning instead of feeling rested,” she said.
Rhomel Crossman’s family no longer wants to send him to school in crime-ridden Oakland
Crossman’s mother, Nerissa Murray Watson, says she’s surprised things like this happen in the United States. She said it’s a sign of a lawless society that police don’t go to crime scenes; She was told to file a police report in person.
Crossman’s aunt, Coren Leslie-Green, had her sleep apnea machine stolen. She says she is starting to feel the impact of being without her device on her health.
Murray Watson said he no longer wants his son to go to school in the Bay Area.
“I have to bring my son to Florida because it’s not safe here,” she said.
Meanwhile, the city is trying to promote its supposedly lower crime rates.
According to the city, violent crime is down more than 30 percent from last year and car thefts are down 60 percent. Those numbers may represent crimes that have been reported, as opposed to incidents that actually occurred.
