Stalkers Pay the Price
Posted: Friday, January 20, 2012
by Jack H. Schick
When I was thirteen, I had a crush on Debbie R---. She was in seventh grade, a year behind me. She didn’t know I liked her, as far as I know. I certainly didn’t have the courage to tell her. I told my buddies, though. They prodded me to say something to her. They all had crushes girls too, but were too scared or embarrassed to say anything either. It might have been a chain reaction if one of us ever actually did get up the nerve. It’s funny how a guy’s attitude changes in just a couple of years. None of us were shy about trying to ‘pick up chicks’ in high school.
I somehow found out that Debbie lived on Mill Street. I looked it up in the phone book and found there was only one family with her last name on the street. I walked all the way up there and located her house number, so I knew where she lived. I thought about calling her on the phone. My buddies really pushed me to do it, but there was no way I could go that far. “Why don’t you call (your girlfriend) then?” I argued back. It was the same old, I’ll-do-it-if-you’ll-do-it thing, and nobody had the guts to do it first.
One day I happened to be hanging out at Merrels’s, the soda shop a block down from the school, and I spotted Debbie walking home from school. I followed her, staying a safe distance behind. I actually thought about running to catch up with her, but I was too shy. I got a better idea. I knew the route she had to take home from there. I’d get ahead of her and then be walking toward her from the opposite direction and it would seem like a chance meeting. I could use that cool walk I'd developed where I let my arm hang down, my on shoulder lower than the other and my head tilted.
I sprinted up an alley, turned down the next street and ran fast as I could to the end. I had to cut through the parking lot of a small textile mill and cross the creek to get up to Mill Street. I'd come out just up the street from her house. I ran into trouble, though. Behind the mill, I had to climb over a chain link fence with barbed wire on the top. My shirt got caught and I tore it getting loose. Then, I had to wade across the ankle deep creek and scramble up the muddy bank. On the far side I had to fight my way through a briar patch. Finally, I had to sprint right past some lady hanging laundry in her back yard to get out to Mill Street. She yelled at me as I went by.
I was sweaty, dirty and scratched up and, after all that, I was too late. I was still fifty yards up the street when Debbie turned up her driveway and went into the house. She didn't even look at me. My mom yelled at me about the shirt and I'd ruined my new sneakers.
I had a crush on Debbie R... for the rest of the school year. Mr. Coleman caught me in the hall outside his room again and I got detention. I kept my eyes on Debbie in the audience and tried to look real cool when I was on stage to get a track metal at the awards assembly. One of my buddies said I looke dlike I was sleeping, but I was just squinting my eyes to look cool. Summer vacation cures a lot of problems for junior high school boys. I forget why I quit stalking Debbie R....
I hadn’t thought about that stuff in a long time. Then I read about a guy they arrested over in Montgomery County the other day. I guess my behavior back in the eighth grade could have led me down a bad path, if I'd persisted. I guess I’m just lucky that I had real-life girlfriends in high school (some who actually knew about it and liked me back). Then I got married young and took myself out of circulation.
*
Kornwell Chan, 37, ran into [an unnamed, 26 year old woman (let’s call her ‘Debbie’)], at the Oreland, Pennsylvania, Train Station. Both of them used the rails to commute to work in Philadelphia every day. Chan always placed himself where the two would cross paths. He’d say “hello,” or "Good Morning," which ‘Debbie’ responded to. Over time, ‘Debbie’ claims that Chan’s greeting started to become ‘overly friendly.’ He began to try to initiate conversation which she resisted.
When he began asking her what she was doing for the holidays, had somehow found out her full name and began calling her by her first name, she got spooked and started trying to avoid him. ‘Debbie’ varied her routes and parked at different locations, but Chan still managed to find her. On surveillance tapes from the station parking area, Chan was seen searching for her and her car. Police say that Chan also got her phone number and called ‘Debbie’s’ house nine times between Christmas and New Year’s.
Chan finally went off the deep end. While ‘Debbie’ and her family were on vacation during the holiday break, he broke into their house and stole ‘Debbie’s’ underwear. While committing the burglary, he turned all the family photographs face down except ‘Debbie’s’, which he moved to the dining room table. It wasn't really a robbery. No other damage was done to the home, and nothing was missing except ‘Debbie’s’ bras and panties.
‘Debbie’ had a pretty good idea who might have committed the crime and the police went to talk to Chan at his home in the 1900 block of Audubon Drive in Oreland. Following an investigation he was arrested and, according to Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman, the ‘garments’ were recovered from Chan’s residence. ‘Debbie’s’ not sure she wants any of them back.
Ferman said “When you hear about the breaking in of an unoccupied home and underwear being taken, certainly the word that comes to mind is creepy. But, when I look at that crime in conjunction with the manner that he was following her around, I think it’s extremely frightening. It is acts like this and courses of conduct like this that historically can become violent very quickly.”
Chan has been charged with burglary, criminal trespass, stalking and other related offences. He was arraigned before Magisterial District Judge Katherine McGill who set bail at $100,000 cash. And, if he makes bail he is prohibited from having any contact with ‘Debbie’ or from being within 100 feet of her home or the train station. The preliminary hearing will be on January 27, 2012, at McGill’s court in Oreland. Chan has not ‘made bail’ and is still in jail, where they give him his own underwear at county expense.
I guess a thirteen year old boy might get away with a little bit of that kind of stuff. There was not much chance I'd have gotten violent. I doubt they would have thrown me in jail for stalking Debbie R---. But, like I said, I’m lucky I got married young and have had to lived with a woman ever since. I got spooked away from the laundry hamper pretty quick, and grew out of going through her underwear drawer soon after that.
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Top-level comments on this article: (2 total)Is that the same "Mr Coleman" that taught me 7th grade social studies?
yes it is. thanks for reading and commenting
ROFL....you keep surprising me. I never took you for a stalker, and to think we had to get anti-stalking legislation passed...at least in most states. Too funny...where your story is concerned:
.......but not for the woman Chan stalked. Yes, many stalkers either get violent or kill their prey if they get paranoid or think their interest is not reciprocated.. I've never understood the need to steal someone's underwear, that's too weird to even contemplate.
Great article.....let us know "what" they actually do to Chan, I'm curious how PA is handling stalkers.You don't know the whole story -- I have a dark side for sure
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