Wake County Real Estate Agent raped at knifepoint while showing home.

[newmom5497]

I was thinking about you Vicki R. when I saw this on the news. We were happy to log in to City Data to see you were safe and sound

[leftfinsright]

Most building companies, especially national builders will not allow their employees (on site agents) to carry a concealed weapon even if they have earned a CC permit. Their solution is to give you a useless panic button that rarely works even *if* you are standing in the sales center! Depending on the builder, they expect their on site agents to stay in the sales office even when it gets dark just after 5:00 in the fall. They HAVE to stay open until 6:00! To be fair, other companies do fall back with the time. I am not sure what the solution is for on site agents. It is my hope that national and regional building companies will really evaluate policy and procedure and make safety more of a priority. My thoughts and prayers are with this agent and her family.

[HappyNCGirl]

I've been a Realtor since 1990, but have worked strictly onsite since the end of 2000. Thankfully, I've never had a bad experience personally. After the tragic event that happened to this agent last week, I started doing research on Realtor assaults. WOW! Now I'm realizing maybe I've just been lucky, because I sure have not been safety smart. As one of my coworkers said, that crazy guy could easily have taken a different turn and ended up in another community. If he wasn't acting suspiciously in the model home, any one of us might have felt comfortable showing him another house. I think many of us have been in similar situations and just never had a issue or thought any thing of it because we luckily happened to be with a sane person who intended no harm.

One Canadian website I found stated that in North America, an average of 22 Realtors are killed every year. That would be Canada and the US combined. Hundreds more are assaulted, robbed, raped.

An Oklahoma law enforcement website I found gave tips on personal safety. They did not recommend "gadgets" like stun guns or pepperspray/mace as a plan for first line of defense. Too much risk involved that the battery would be dead, the stun ineffective, or the pepper spray/mace canister had lost its charge. Or face it - how many of us really would even be able to effectively handle those things. The goal is to get away as quick as possible, you can lose precious time if your gadget fails to work as intended. Not to mention, its not likely an onsite agent is going to greet any visitor with a stun gun in her hand. And they are kind of hard to conceal.

This site did recommend that you read up on personal safey/defense and make a PLAN for what you would do if you found yourself in a bad situation. Its too late to try to come up with a plan once you're already in trouble. The number one suggestion was to try hard not to get yourself into a situation where you could be at risk. That makes sense - things like walking alone after dark, going into a deserted parking garage alone etc. are obvious examples. However, many times, people are accosted in surroundings that wouldn't be considered high-risk.

My safety plan for the times I'm alone at my model home include being aware of who is walking up to the door. If it is a man by himself, I automatically go into caution mode. I immediately position myself to greet him by the entry door to the model, keep him in front of me, and keep my position near the door. After the initial few minutes of meet and greet, IF I'm uncomfortable for ANY reason at all, I'm exiting the model/sales office. I now keep my cell phone on my person at all times, along with my car key. If I'm not uncomfortable, I will encourage the person to look around the model home, get him to register - all the while keeping him in front of me at all times. I do not get more than 10' from an exit door at any time. I do not go upstairs at anytime. If he wants to see other houses, he's going by himself. I will be on alert at all times no matter how nice and normal the man may seem.

I intend to do this 100 percent of the time. If anyone pulls a gun, I've already decided I'm running. I already plan that I will not get into a vehicle with an attacker no matter what the threat, figuring the worst will definitely happen then for sure. The possibility of being threatened with a knife is terrifying beyond words to me and it will be harder for me to stick to my plan to run in that scenario. If faced with that, I pray for the courage to keep my senses, not get hysterical, panic and freeze. All this planning assumes that the attacker hasn't just already knocked me senseless. Or that fear hasn't rendered me senseless!

I work for a large builder. They are taking the safety issue very seriously, talked with us onsite agents to get our suggestions, listened to our fears, and have committed resources and personnel to make us as safe as is possible. Taking a self defense course is also in my future.