I was almost kidnapped by a fake blind man

I know that this particular type of story has been posted before - but this is my personal experience with this kind of thing. <br><br>I live in a big city in the UK that is currently hosting a pretty big international sporting event. Because of this there are a lot of people around who don't speak English, so I, like lots of others, have been making an effort to help them as much as possible. <br><br>I was on my way home from work early one evening last week when I was approached by a man with a cane and wearing sunglasses who claimed to be German and to have followed the athletics here. He was very pleasant and courteous, and he asked me for directions into the nearby town centre. I told him where to go, and I asked him if he needed any help as I was heading in the same direction anyway. He told me he was meeting his wife and son who were waiting for him in a pub there and that he had been trying to find his way there for a while - I said that if he wanted I could help him find it, and that I could even call the pub and ask them for directions, as they would surely be worried about him. He was incredibly thankful, but he said that he didn't want to be too much of a burden so I should only walk with him until the first turn, and then he could go the rest of the way alone. <br><br>I know that this is where I messed up. I work in accessibility for disabled people, and I am also disabled myself, so I have always made helping people with disabilities my priority. Knowing that he was "blind", and also a stranger in a foreign country, I just didn't think that it would be appropriate to accuse him of lying to me. We walked together for a while, and he was very chatty. He told me his name, where he was from, what his job is, what his wife and kids do - I was a bit confused as to why he said he had a daughter as well as a son, when he had only mentioned one child before, but I wrote it off as him being mixed up from the travel and the disability, and thought little more of it. <br><br>After around ten minutes of walking, he stopped me and told me that he didn't want to walk into the centre with me because he didn't want to lead me too far out of my way. I said it was fine and I would help him the rest of the way, and he was very insistent that he went alone from there. I was starting to get confused and a little annoyed at how back and forth he was being, but again I assumed that it was just his disability, or him being a stranger in a new place, or both. We exchanged phone numbers, and he asked me to text his wife to let her know that he was on his way - I was a bit surprised when I saw that his phone was an iPhone that wasn't even locked, but I didn't think too much of it and sent the text as he asked. <br><br>I only started to feel really uneasy when he told me the name to send the text to. Rather than the traditional German name that he had told me was his wife's, it was a name that I recognised as being from the country I come from. I don't know why, but this just made every alarm bell in my body start ringing. He could have been married to someone from my country, it's not unheard of, but something just told me that everything about this situation was very, very wrong. I told him I had to go pick something up, and that I would see him later so I could meet his family, and then I practically ran away from him. <br><br>I went into a nearby shop just in case he decided to follow me, and once I was in there I called the pub he claimed to have been going to. The lady on the phone told me that no one matching his description had been in there at all that day, or as far as she knew at any other time, and that she hadn't gotten any text from anyone about him being on his way. That was all the confirmation I needed to be completely certain that he was faking his blindness in order to abduct someone. <br><br>I reported what had happened to the police and they told me that there have been several accounts from women of similar events around the city and the stadium over the past few days, and that they would look into it. I didn't think much more of it until yesterday, when I was in the same shop that I went into after meeting him. The owner and I were chatting as we often do, and I mentioned what had happened to her and asked if she had heard anything about it. She hadn't heard anything from the police, but she told me that her daughter had had a very similar encounter around a week before me. Her and her friends were approached by someone matching the description I gave, who claimed to be from the same country, who also claimed to have been on his way to meet his wife and kids in the same pub. She didn't go with him, and she also reported it to the police, but she also hasn't heard anything back from them since. <br><br>If I hadn't sent that text, I might have ended up god knows where, and god knows what might have happened to me. I'm thankful to be safe, but if he has gotten to anyone else I might never find out. <br><br>Fake blind man, I don't know what your plan is, but I hope it wasn't to abduct someone so that you and your friends could rape and torture them. But if that was your plan, it won't work, not while there are people who care about each other and will help in any way that they can.