Barely escaped mugging in Los Angeles at a Chick-fil-a.

I have a wild story from today where a shirtless, scary looking guy tried to mug us and we managed to escape by an inch. I’m actually feeling like I’m in shock and wanted to vent/see if this is common to experience in LA or if we just got super unlucky? We’re from out of town, here’s what happened and how we got away:

My wife and I are doing a road trip through the US from Seattle to San Diego. Today we arrived in LA, visited Santa Monica, walked around - no issues.

At around 3pm we went to the Chick-fil-a at Sunset Blvrd & Highland Ave. While waiting in line to order, a sketchy dude walked up to me and pointed at my fanny pack/pockets area, said something and then just shuffled off. I noticed that he hung around and was constantly looking at us.

I immediately felt that something was off and as soon as he was looking away/distracted we rushed back to our car, the guy noticed and chased after us. We got in the car and managed to lock the doors. The guy was trying to open the doors while my wife was trying to start the car, she panicked and forgot to hold the break down while pressing the start button so the car wouldn’t start… after what felt like an hour, she realized and got the engine running. We backed out while he was trying to get into our car. Then floored it and sped out of the parking lot while he was banging really hard on the passenger window.

We are OK and so is our car. But this felt like being in a horror movie and we are pretty traumatized by the experience and are not wanting to leave our hotel at this point lol. Saying that we are shocked would be an understatement!!

Maybe we just got really unlucky? Obviously wearing a fanny pack was a mistake, I understand that now. I’m not sure if we did the right thing, maybe we should have stayed by the chick-fil-a and called 911 instead of risking an escape when we noticed him staring?

I’m so shocked since everyone else is just walking around with their phones out, purses, backpacks etc and nobody is being bothered. It was weird that he was laser focused on us. I’ve also heard that LA is supposed to be safe-ish during the day and in busy areas.

We’ve never had anything like this happen before so I just wanted to ask if this is common here or if we were in a bad area?

I dunno lol. Weird experience, trying to learn something from it I guess. Thanks for reading and would love your thoughts!