In Seattle? Really?

I got mugged earlier this evening. It was 7PM in a very safe part of Seattle near the W bar on 4th Ave. Lots of people were milling about.

Aggressor attempted, and failed, to grab my laptop bag from behind; it was too tightly latched to my person. A second attempt didn’t fare much better.

I was with @psagerson, who realized what was happening and instinctively grabbed our aggressor’s arm. Peter is extremely tall; this gave our aggressor pause. After our aggressor backed up we got a look… and recognized him from the central library, which had served as our afternoon office. In other words: we got cased.

I thought we were done, but instead of taking off, our aggressor redoubled his efforts. He rapidly re-approached me. He said he had a gun and would shoot me if I didn’t give my bag to him immediately. No more fight from me: I complied.

I lost $3000 in gear — everything I use daily for work, and just about every valuable thing I own — including a MacBook Pro (early 2009), an iPad 16GB WiFi, a pair of Bowers & Wilkins P5 headphones, and a Clear 4G USB modem.

I have find-my-iPad activated, but it hasn’t given a new location yet. This makes me think my property will be wiped and rapidly fenced — though it’s hard to say for sure. Fingers crossed about potential identity theft.