Watch out for lures when you play Pokemon Go. Here's what happened to me today.

So everyone is enjoying Pokemon Go. So far, I haven't really found anything. Tonight, I decided to go alone to some local pokestops that had lures which were a market near my house and a park near Santiago College. I couldn't get anything at the market and I moved to the park. This is where it gets good. My first mistake was taking the wrong turn into an apartment complex with no parking. I thought to myself, "hey, might as well get some walking done for my eggs." So, I'm walking around looking for a way to get to the park. The elementary school's locked and there's gates all around and I thought that the park had to be entered in a specific way. I walked back to my car and then I see an opening. This is where I made my next mistake. This opening is a long alley. It's night and it's dark, and I'm not very strong. There were a group of people there just hanging or something. I see an almost empty bottle of Jack Daniels on the floor, so clearly they have been drinking. I turn around to check my pockets to make sure everything's there. I needed to charge my phone because Pokemon Go is a battery killer, so I had a portable charger attached to my phone. As I check, I see two people behind me so it doesn't seem like I can turn around because of the way they were eyeing me. So then, I walk forward and one person walks up to me and asks me, "what are you playing?" I respond casually, "oh it's just the new Pokemon Go app." He inquires me on what it's about and I answer his questions and we just walk forward. He asks if he could play and I said sure and explained to him the rules. We find a Mankey with CP 14 and a Ratata with CP 70 and we catch both of them. It was pretty cool but he kept wanting to hold on to my phone. I told him about the lures and we walked over to the Irvine Park sign. While talking to him about this, he proceeds to take off the charger that I had attached to my phone. I felt threatened, so I tried as fast as I could to call 911, but he kept pressing the home button to change the screen to siri to negate my call. We get to the sign. This is where it gets serious. As I walk up to the stone sign, I see some people. In my mind I'm thinking, "Thank goodness, please help me." This person has been following me and it looks like he's about to run away with my phone. I walk up to them and whisper, "help. Please help. I don't know him. He's following me. Help." coincidentally, one of the people I ran into was Wyatt, an old acquaintance and friend of mine from high school. The person was yelling, "just let me play the game! I want to play! I've never played it before." I kept telling him, "no, no it's okay man." I could smell the alcohol in his breath. Wyatt told me to get in his car. I tried to call 911 one more time. I had my left hand holding my phone, and I had my right hand trying to open the door to Wyatt's car, but his car door was locked. The person then grabs my phone with both of his hands and tears off my phone case. Afterwards, we get into a struggle, and since I'm really weak, I'm losing my grip against him, especially since he's physically more built than I am. So then, the next thing that happens is Wyatt's other friend, Morgan tells the person, "What you're doing isn't right man." The guy himself felt victimized with Morgan by saying, "you look like you're about to hit me or something." Wyatt, Morgan, and Alex surrounded him asking him to give his phone back. I felt helpless just standing there. We kept demanding the phone back, but he kept refusing. He threatened to bring a group of people with him and ran away. We didn't want to get hurt. I wouldn't be able to forgive myself if I got friends hurt over something like this. There was an accomplice with him, some girl with dreadlocks. They both ran and jumped over a fence. They ran fast and there was nothing we could really do. We looked and luckily ran into a few police officers and Garnet drove us around for a bit. We explained the entire incident to the officers so they could take notes. She offered me a ride back to my car in her car. Garnet said, "I'm definitely not playing Pokemon Go" which was kind of funny. It was really lucky that I ran into my old friends from high school when I did. I feel stupid for being alone at night, especially when I'm not that strong. As I was being driven back to my car by the police, the girl with the dreadlocks was still in the area and rode her scooter down the street. The police stopped her and apprehended her. The last thing I heard was that they were to take her home. She was 18 and all these people were a part of a gang called "Vandal Squad." She was armed with a knife, 5 inches long.

So, long story short. Went out to a pokestop with a lure to catch pokemon alone at night, walked down an alley after taking a wrong turn to get to a park, someone stole my phone by some dude in a gang.