Word: touristed
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Perhaps the most unsettling thing about last week's killing of a German tourist in Miami is that Uwe-Wilhelm Rakebrand and his wife were perfectly willing to start their belated honeymoon by behaving like urban guerrillas. They had the right attitude for a city where five foreign tourists have been killed so far this year: if you want a vacation in Miami, train for it. Before departing in their rental car from the airport last Tuesday, they mapped out their route in advance. They kept to the main road. They stored their valuables out of sight, drove...
...truck as well. The day before, they arrested the driver of the truck, Recondall Wiggins, 19, who seemed so stunned by the deed that he ran to confess it to his mother, a secretary in the Metro Dade police department. "Momma! Did you hear about the tourist that got shot? I'm going to prison 'cause we did it," he told her. Barely an hour after the crime, he, Jones, and a third cruising bandit even drove back to the police-packed scene in a stolen car to see what they had done...
Rakebrand's murder seemed to repudiate Miami's efforts over the past six months to protect its most precious industry, tourism, which last year pumped $7.3 billion into the local economy. The highly publicized death of another German tourist last April, who was run over in front of her mother and two children in a similar hit-and-rob attack, led the city to install new streetlights, post road signs to help visitors avoid unsafe areas and set up a task force that does everything from providing escorts for lost tourists to patrolling under cover to catch would-be thieves...
Partly as a result, tourist robberies in Dade County have dropped 80% since February. But Miami's latest outrage seems to have crossed a psychological threshold in the minds of residents and guests alike. More than 30,000 wanted felons are now on the streets in Dade County alone, and people are losing patience with a revolving-door justice system that rotates criminals back onto the streets practically as fast as they are caught. Miami has the highest violent-crime rate of any American city, and even former priests have been known to pack pistols in their briefcases...
...other side of Florida, a German tourist was shot and killed by robbers as he and his wife drove in from the Miami airport. Uwe-Wilhelm Rakebrand was shot in the back after he refused to stop when a van bumped his rental car from behind on the freeway. A young couple and an accomplice have been charged in the murder...