PSA to my PG County girls: Be EXTRA vigilant in the Bowie/Vista Gardens area, specifically in the parking lot where Target is! My friend was sitting in her parked car alone after coming from Target and Office Depot when she felt a huge impact on her car that would’ve made her

think she was hit if she wasn’t parked. When she looked in her rear view, a man was at her trunk and looked as if he had just dropped something and was picking it up. She said that he was a very slim Black man and was confused by what could have made the impact because of his

size. She turns her head and she sees him running FULL speed into a black car with tinted windows and speeds off. Feeling very eerie, she drove out of the parking lot. As she’s driving, her tire light comes on. She pulled into a residential neighborhood but felt paranoid

so she continued on to the next commercial parking lot she saw. As she pulls in she sees THE SAME CAR pull into the lot and park behind her car but several rows back, as if she was being watched/plotted on. As a natural overthinker, she now realized that something wasn’t

right because she was 5 minutes from Vista Gardens where she just left and here is the man after speeding out of the parking lot just minutes before. Because she felt uncomfortable, she never got out of the car. The man didn’t follow her any further probably because he felt that

his window of opportunity to follow through with any plan was gone because she didn’t get out of the car. When she got to the tire shop, she saw that her tire had been slashed completely (she JUST bought this car!) with hopes that she would let her guard down to tend to it.

I say all this to say that we need to be extra vigilant and super aware of our surroundings especially to my friends who are familiar and/or frequent the Bowie area or PG County in general!! She told me that I can share this!! Stay safe and protect Black women!!

This is also a reminder to myself because I can be so oblivious at times just moving through the world and that’s scary to know my friend was preyed on like that in an area that me and and my friends visit often.