CYPRESS, Texas - Tuesday was not the day for an alleged purse thief who was stopped after several Good Samaritans, led by a mom, sprang into action.
This happened at 11 a.m. Tuesday at the Fairfield Town Center in Cypress. Chick-fil-A manager Bill Everett says he was out in the parking lot when it all started.
"We started hearing horns and we saw three or four people running through the parking lot," Everett said. “We heard someone yell, ‘Robbery’, so we figured out pretty quickly somebody had robbed somebody."
Witnesses say the alleged thief, believed to be just 17 years old, grabbed a woman’s purse in the nearby HomeGoods, but then, at least one nearby mom and a Marshall’s employee sprang into action, chasing the alleged thief up and down the strip center parking lot.
"There were two people trying to wrestle him down. So I got in there thinking a third body wouldn’t be a bad idea...he was a big boy," Everett said.
One of the tacklers was a mom.
“I was impressed with the lady,” Everett said. “I wouldn’t want to mess with her, actually. She was pretty tough. So I was glad to be right beside her.”
Once the crime was stopped, the Good Samaritans tried to talk to the teen about his actions while they waited for Harris County Precinct 5 deputies to arrive.
“He really was just, I think, ashamed of what he’d done," Everett said. "It’s the kindness of God that leads us to repentance. I still value to him as a person and I wanted to see if, maybe, we could redeem that in some simple way, and hopefully, he’ll respond to it.”