365个英语简短小故事-86. Crime on the Rise

（单词翻译）

A woman is standing¹ at a bus stop at noon. A van pulls up. A young man hops² out of the van, grabs the woman’s purse, gets back into the van, and it drives off.

An elderly man is standing on the sidewalk in front of his home at 10:30 p.m. He is admiring the full moon. A car pulls up right in front of him and stops. Two men get out. One man punches the old man in the mouth. The other man takes the man’s wallet out of his pants. They get back into their car and drive off.

A woman puts her laptop and purse into her car in her driveway at 3:15 p.m. She starts the car, and then remembers that she forgot to turn off the TV. She goes back into her house, turns off the TV, and comes back to her car. Her purse and her laptop are gone.

The department of transportation built an elevated freeway on top of the 110 freeway in Los Angeles. The new freeway is supported by more than 100 thick concrete columns. Since the freeway was built, each column has been tagged with graffiti and repainted at least ten times.

Late one night, someone managed to raise a heavy metal shopping cart to the top of a flagpole outside a supermarket. The next morning, a 56-year-old supermarket worker hooked up the US flag and started to raise it by pulling on the rope. A second later, the cart crashed down on her. She was permanently³ paralyzed. When released from the hospital, she told a TV reporter that she forgave the culprit. “Please don’t do this again,” she said. “You might kill someone, and that would be terrible.” A police spokesman admitted that they might not ever find the “prankster.”