“That broke my spirit,” stated Ahmed, who believes these have been the identical guys who pistol-whipped her and stole Max, her senior West Highland terrier, whereas they have been out on their walk Saturday night. “I was realizing this was probably a ring and they’ve been doing this a long time.”
She stayed up till 4 a.m. scrolling by way of the guidelines, emails and help that have been flooding her inbox.
At 10 a.m., she obtained the decision she had been dreading.
“We have Max,” the detective stated, in dragnet deadpan.
His tone didn’t sound like excellent news.
Earlier within the day, a D.C. resident named David Graham had been handing out fliers to tenants on the building the place he works throughout from Kenilworth Park & Aquatic Gardens when he noticed one thing white throughout the road within the grass.
It was a canine, plodding alongside in a sluggish, senior gait.
“When (the dog) turned around and I saw the spot under his eye, I knew it was that dog in the news,” Graham stated.
Ahmed made fliers with Max’s image on them after she was attacked Saturday evening.
It was one thing she by no means imagined would occur in dog-friendly D.C., which felt like a haven to her in contrast with New York, the place she grew up.
When a masked and hooded man got here as much as her Saturday, she thought he was going to ask her for instructions. Instead, he lifted his sweatshirt to point out a gun.
They scuffled, and he hit her within the head with the gun at the least twice, she stated. When a dark-colored van pulled up, Ahmed stated, she requested the motive force for assist.
“I yelled, ‘Rape!’ because I thought people would pay attention to that,” she stated. “Then I told the driver that I was being robbed.” But the motive force was in on it.
The males stuffed Max contained in the van, Ahmed stated. She remembers attempting to seize a door deal with, however the car didn’t have one. She thrust out her arm to seize Max, however the van sped off.
Most possible, the robbers who took Max from Ahmed realized that his sentimental worth was greater than his market worth and set him free. He was discovered about six miles from home.
It wasn’t the primary time Max and Ahmed had been separated.
The final time was 5 years in the past, when a downpour struck throughout a household highway journey from New York to Florida for her uncle’s funeral.
“The car flipped over. My mom was ejected and the car landed on her,” Ahmed stated. Ahmed was knocked unconscious, however Max’s barking woke her up.
When she obtained to the hospital, they instructed her that her mother had died and Max had disappeared.
They posted his photograph and knowledge throughout social media in South Carolina. Ahmed was reeling. Her uncle. Her mother. And then Max.
But the following day, somebody noticed the bedraggled Westie trotting alongside Interstate 95. Rescuers used the canine’s microchip to reunite him with Ahmed.
This time, the wandering Westie was a bit of slower as he turned to his rescuer and headed his method.
“The way he came to me, I knew it was him,” stated Graham, who can be from Queens, like Ahmed. He acknowledged Max from information stories, remembering that Ahmed had described the spot below one eye the place he’d just lately had surgical procedure.
Graham introduced the canine to police, and that’s when the detective known as Ahmed.
“It wasn’t like a movie, with Max running to me,” Ahmed stated, after they have been reunited on the sixth District police station. “I was the one who ran to him. And kissed him all over.”
She introduced his water bowl, meals bowl, blanket, T-shirt (in case he was chilly and moist) and an ice cream deal with. Max was clearly exhausted however apparently unhurt.
The detective instructed Ahmed that the case isn’t over. They recovered surveillance video of the incident and are following leads. Because the van could have been stolen, she’s speaking to the automobile theft division.
Ahmed stated she stays an optimist, pointing to all of the individuals who rushed in with help and ideas, and to Graham for the way light he was with Max. And she has a request.
“I want to pay it forward,” she stated.
Rashawn Williams, 31, is a nonverbal man with autism who has been lacking since Friday, when he left his residential facility in Silver Spring and boarded a bus headed for Fort Totten, the place Ahmed was attacked.
Williams’s father, Jimmy Hall, posted a wrenching video by which he asks, by way of heaving sobs, for folks to assist discover his son.
Ahmed stated she hopes Williams will get the identical degree of help, vitality and luck that Max did when he was misplaced.
Williams “deserves just as much attention,” she stated.
