iPhone Muggings SURGE In DC, No Recourse For Victims

Alexandra Friendly's iPhone trauma started with a robbery.

En route from work one afternoon this April, Friendly walked out of the Rhode Island Avenue Metro station and made her way up 10th Street NE toward home. Along the way, she popped in her earphones and played some music on the iPhone she'd bought two weeks earlier.

Not content with one distraction, she also loaded a book she'd bought off Amazon, walking with her head buried in the screen, "oblivious to the world around me," the 30-year-old opera singer recalls.

Then she felt a hand on top of hers. And then a yank that pulled her phone out of her hand, breaking her headphones off at the plug and leaving the buds in her ears. She watched, shocked, as her iPhone thief made his way back to a car. Enraged, she ran to the car and grabbed onto the door as it started to roll off. She managed to hang on until she was dropped a short way down the block, where a woman helped her up.

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