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Exotic dancers robbed at gunpoint in Panorama City
The dancers share their terrifying story with FOX 11’s Brooke Thomas.
LOS ANGELES - A surveillance video shows the terrifying moment two exotic dancers were robbed at gunpoint outside their home in Los Angeles’ Panorama City neighborhood the night of the BET Awards.
Now, they’re sharing their story to help other women.
"It was just a regular work night for us," Maiya Courtney recalled. "We weren’t expecting anything to happen out of the ordinary."
However, something out of the ordinary did happen and it happened in the blink of an eye.
Dancer "Ace Notorious" said the incident occurred within seconds of them getting out of an Uber and grabbing their items from the trunk.
"In the moment, I don’t think we realized what was going on," she said.
The video shows two men running toward them as they pointed guns in their faces and demanded their belongings. Maiya Courtney said she was frozen in fear and didn’t process what happened until she watched it back on video.
Ace Notorious and Maiya Courtney.
"I didn’t even know that one of the guys had cocked the pistol back until I looked at the video," she said.
The thieves took everything including a suitcase filled with an estimated $10,000 in cash, along with their overnight bags, purses, and phones.
After it happened, they said their first thought was to blame themselves and felt embarrassed.
"We were just trying to think of alternatives of what we should have done to avoid that," Courtney said.
The women said other people blamed them too and said they were unworthy of care because of what they do for a living.
Their families are helping them cope with what they said was the scariest thing they’ve ever experienced.