WESTFIELD – When a city family decided the time had come to sell an heirloom ring they turned to the Internet, never dreaming how wrong the deal could go.
The family – a single mother and her two adult children – advertised the gold and diamond ring on craigslist.com, an online classified ad site that the son had successfully used to sell motorcycle parts, his mother said.
She said that the family made contact with a potential buyer and said that their conversations with the buyer did not give them any reason for alarm so her children arranged to meet the man in a parking lot near the Massachusetts Turnpike entrance which was convenient for the man who apparently was coming from New Hampshire.
The woman’s daughter later told police that she and her brother met the man in a restaurant parking lot where he examined the ring and gave them a box which he indicated contained the several thousand dollars he had agreed to pay for it.
However, she told police that once the man handed off the box, which did not contain any cash, he produced a handgun and stole the ring.
The young woman said that she and her brother did not resist the man’s brazen theft and the thief ran to his waiting car, which she said was occupied by at least one other person, and fled.
Police report that her bother gave chase in his vehicle as the fleeing car entered the turnpike but, Capt. Michael McCabe reports, the man broke off the pursuit when he saw that someone inside the vehicle was pointing the handgun at him.
The young woman said that the incident is an eye opener for her.
“We live in Westfield, you wouldn’t expect things (like this) to happen here. But it does,” she said.
She said, in retrospect, that “it’s probably not the safest way to do things” and said that she is glad that she did not invite the putative buyer to her home where something worse might have happened.
Her mother said that she did not raise her children to be suspicious of others but said that the incident shows, when dealing online, “you never know who you’re dealing with.”
McCabe said that, although the male victim was not able to observe the entire registration plate of the fleeing vehicle, police do have a promising avenue of investigation which detectives are following.
