A Florida family is sending a grim warning to travelers coming to crime-ridden Oakland, California, where their car was broken into as they dropped 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 he plans to retire because they are all too traumatized to leave him in Oakland to go to school.
His mother, Nerissa Murray Watson, said KTVU“In Oakland, California, you just have to be careful. Everything is completely gone.’
Her family flew into town this weekend and rented a car to explore the city before driving to downtown Oakland to enroll Rhomel in school.
A Florida family was robbed on their first day in Oakland, where they were visiting to enroll their son in college
Saturday night they left the car a block away from the school to pick up dinner from a local restaurant.
They were only gone for 15 minutes, they say, before returning to find the windows of the white Nissan Rogue they were renting had been broken out and suitcases full of valuables stolen.
“Three thousand dollars in a bag my husband had placed under the seat, along with three passports, Social Security cards, and my son’s high school diploma and birth certificate were all taken,” Murray Watson said.
Police told her to file a report in person at the police station, but she knows her efforts are unlikely to bear fruit.
“To me it’s lawless because we even called the police three times and they said they couldn’t come,” she said.
“I didn’t know these things were happening in America, so it’s very strange to me.”
In addition to the hard-to-replace documents the family lost, a member was robbed of a sleep apnea machine.
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 aid.
“Now I’m starting to feel my heart 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 is shocked that things like this are happening in the United States. She said it is a sign of a lawless society that the police will not come to the scene of the crime. She was told that she had to report it personally to the police
Crossman’s aunt, Coren Leslie-Green, had her sleep apnea machine stolen. She says she’s starting to feel the impact of not having her device on her health
Murray Watson said she no longer wants her son to go to school in the Bay Area.
“I have to take my son back 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 burglaries are down 60 percent. These numbers may explain reported crimes, as opposed to incidents that actually occurred.
