These folks were moving their son into a dorm, and thieves smashed the windows of their rental car and took pretty much everything. This happened in Oakland, of course.
FOX News reports:
Florida family pulls teen from California college after losing thousands in ‘bipping’ car robberyA Florida family is no longer sending their teen to a California college after their car was “bipped” when they moved their son into his dorm on Saturday, costing them thousands of dollars in lost belongings and important personal documents.Rhomel Crossman had just graduated from a Florida high school and was slated to attend Lincoln University in downtown Oakland this fall — but after his family was robbed, they told KTVU FOX 2 San Francisco they intend to rescind his enrollment.”In Oakland, California, you just gotta be careful,” Crossman’s mother, Nerissa Murray Watson, told the outlet. “Everything is totally gone.”Crossman’s family flew to Oakland on Saturday and rented a car with Thrifty, the mother said. After registering their son, the family left their rental car parked a block away from Lincoln University on the corner of 15th and Franklin Street to pick up food at a Jamaican restaurant nearby.When they returned 15 minutes later, the windows of the rented white Nissan Rogue were broken and their five suitcases stolen.Among their contents were “three thousand dollars in a bag my husband put under the seat with three passports, social security cards, and my son’s high school diploma and birth certificate,” Watson said.The family also lost a sleep apnea machine that they said they’d left in the car, per KTVU.”Bipping” is a slang term that comes from the police language “burglary in progress” and refers to smash-and-grab robberies from unattended cars, according to the San Francisco Standard. Thieves commonly use a “bipping hammer,” a small, easily concealed tool used to easily and quietly break car windows without much force.
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