Hilary Brown was in mid-sentence on her laptop, tapping away in a crowded coffee shop in Inman Park, when all of a sudden it just disappeared.
A young man, standing over her, had yanked the white MacBook out from under her hands. Before Brown registered what was happening, he was flying out the door of the Inman Perk coffee house with her computer, running down the street with half a year's worth of her nursing school notes on the hard drive.
Police got a call about the "snatch thief" just after 3:30 p.m. Thursday. By the time they arrived, the criminal was long gone. Brown and a couple coffee shop countermen had chased him out the door, but he got across the street and into a waiting gray Mercury Sable, with a driver who whisked him away.
"I was literally on my computer, like typing, and this guy just jerked it up from the table," Brown told the AJC a few hours after the theft.
Like many who frequent the crowded coffee shop on Highland Avenue, the 25-year-old nursing school student said she thought crime wouldn't happen there. She said she routinely left her laptop unguarded when she left her table to go to the restroom in the past.
"It feels really safe in there," she said.
Matthew Wilson, 27, said it's a "cozy" and "non-corporate" environment, with plenty of restaurants within walking distance. That's why he drives all the way from his home in Buckhead just to hang out there.
Like Brown, Wilson was typing on his laptop when the thief walked in the door. From the corner of his eyes, Wilson saw the guy going from table to table. Wilson said he assumed he was looking for a place to sit amidst the 30 or 40 people who were tapping on their laptops and drinking coffee.
"It's certainly the first I've seen or heard of anything like that happening there, or even in the Inman Park area, Wilson said. "He just grabbed her computer as she was still typing on it. ... Everybody was sort of like, ‘What just happened?'"
Brown said she doubts she'll ever see her computer again. She bought it last summer, so it was fairly new. On the bright side, it had only half a year's worth of school notes and personal photographs on it. "I'm not a computer person," Brown said, explaining why she hadn't backed up her data. She was studying for a test Friday.
Luckily, her friends were able to give her paper copies of the test material.
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