Well, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on when you’re catchin’ up with ol’ Howe Weird! Hope you’ve had a mighty fine day so far.
Now, friends, sometimes a story comes along that just makes you scratch your head and wonder, ‘How on earth did that happen?’ This next tale hails from the bustling streets of New York City back in 2016, and it’s a puzzler involving a woman, a long-shuttered electronics store, and a fair bit of mystery.
Picture this: it’s February 24th, 2016. Authorities are called to a seemingly abandoned RADIO SHACK (paid link) located at 2307 Broadway. Now, who here remembers a good old RadioShack? They used to be everywhere, full of batteries, wires, and all sorts of gadgets. A real hub for folks tinkering with electronics, or just needing that one specific connector. But this particular one? It had been permanently closed, with signs taped right to the doors letting folks know it was out of business.
Inside, they found a woman, identified only as ‘Reva,’ in her thirties. She claimed she’d been trapped in the store for three whole days, thinking it was still open for business. Now, that’s where the head-scratching really begins, isn’t it? Three days, in a store with ‘permanently closed’ signs right there for all to see. The plot thickens, though, because police also discovered Reva hadn’t just been ‘stuck’ for three days; she’d apparently been living in the store for three *weeks* before anyone found her.
After being discovered, Reva was taken to a local hospital for evaluation, just to make sure she was alright. After that, she was turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, as they’re known. ICE confirmed at the time that she was being processed for deportation. Her full name and country of origin were never publicly released, which, I reckon, just adds another layer to this curious tale.
It certainly makes you wonder about the paths folks take and the peculiar corners some find themselves in. A closed-down electronics store might seem like an unlikely residence, but life, as we know, can be stranger than fiction. Makes you think about what kind of little setup you could make in a quiet, abandoned place, doesn’t it? Maybe you’d need a good flashlight, or some portable power banks. Just speculating, of course.
Check out RadioShack on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=RadioShack&tag=howeweirdcant-20 (paid link)
Original story from NBC New York.