65-year-old Val Renfro gets her purse back from Purse-snatcher Ricky Sample

[Tazzzz]

Ricky Lee Sample, 47



Val Renfro, 65



Too bad she wasnt packin a 9mm in her bra. Tards lucky none of the other Texans were packing heat.

Val Renfro didn’t think twice Sunday when she chased down the man who snatched her purse.

The 65-year-old Arlington grandmother was getting into her car outside an Office Depot on Eastchase Parkway when Ricky Lee Sample, 47, came up from behind and shoved her, according to police reports.

She wrestled him outside the car. He pushed her down and ran away with her purse, she said.

She immediately grabbed her phone, which she keeps in her bra for such situations, and dialed 911.

"Somebody just grabbed my purse out of my car,” she told the operator. “I’m going to chase him down.”

Renfro careened her silver Buick Park Avenue out of the parking lot toward the nearby UA Eastchase Market 9 theater. There, she spotted the thief, a 5-foot-9-inch man in jeans and a hooded shirt.

She rolled down her window, just enough so he could hear her, and angrily shouted, “Where’s my purse? You put it on the hood, now. Give me my purse before I run you over.”

Sample didn’t put her purse on the hood. She accelerated. She hit him. But he kept running east toward Ederville Road.

Horns were blaring all round her, and Renfro saw citizens from the cinema chasing Sample. Six or seven men finally circled and contained him.

Renfro parked her car and walked up to him. The 911 tapes caught this:

Sample: “I don’t have nothing."

Renfro: “Like hell you don’t."

Before Renfro hung up with the dispatcher, she found her purse and checked its contents. The $300 in cash she had was still there.

Police were on their way. When they arrived, they arrested Sample.

Renfro said in an interview that when Sample shoved her, she just reacted. Her adrenaline was pumping, and it was “a natural thing to do.”

She’s thankful now that she carries her phone on her body at all times. And she’s tired of women being picked on.

"He didn’t count on me following up," she said.

Renfro doesn’t advise other women to react like she did. (And police will tell you that the safest thing to do is to let a purse snatcher have the purse.)

But she does have a message: Be aware of danger and take self-defense courses so you can protect yourself.

Finally, she thanked everyone who helped her, police and citizens alike.

“Somebody told me chivalry is still alive in Texas, but it’s not chivalry,” she said. “It’s good citizens who do the right thing."

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcont....203fc6d7.html

[Wicked Doll]

Obviously Sample had not heard that you do NOT fuck with purses belonging to little old ladies. He needs to get in touch with Patrick Kostal http://www.dreamindemon.com/2009/02/...tal-got-pwned/

I'm glad nobody was hurt. I can see her in her Buick Park Avenue running his sorry ass down now. ROFLMAO! You go Val!

[Tazzzz]

A 65-year-old grandmother says she chased down a man who had just snatched her purse, hit him with her car and held him until police arrived

"I was madder than hell is what I was," Val Renfro said. "I didn't think about anything else except, 'He's not going to get away with this.'"

Renfro had just finished shopping at Office Depot on Eastchase Parkway in East Fort Worth on Sunday afternoon and was getting in her car when Ricky Lee Sample stole her purse, she said.

"The next thing I know, somebody just blindsided me,” Renfro said.

She grabbed her cell phone, which she carries in her bra, and called 911 as he fled.

"Someone just grabbed my purse out of the car," she told the operator. "I’m going to chase him down."

Listen to Renfro's 911 call and those of other passersby.

Renfro said she got in her car and screeched out of the parking lot. She spotted the man in front of a nearby movie theater.

Her confrontation with the man was recorded in her 911 call.

"Where’s my purse?" she yelled. "You give it to me now. I got the police on the phone right now. You give me my purse."

Sample tried to walk away, she said.

"And I thought, 'I'm going to lose this man, and the police aren't here,'" Renfro said. "So he got right in front of my right fender, and I just pushed on the gas."

She said he flipped up in the air.

"I hit him," she told the 911 operator.

Sample kept running, she said.

Like a scene out of a movie, customers leaving the theater joined in the chase.

"Now there’s others chasing him," Renfro told the 911 operator.

Jason Hughes, who was at the movie theater, said it was "pretty crazy."

"When somebody says she just got robbed, and you see a guy running at you with a purse, it's kind of like the first reaction," he said.

Several other people also joined in and corralled the man.

"They’ve got him,” an excited Renfro told the operator.

Police arrived minutes later and arrested Sample in connection with the theft.

Sample, 47, has previously been convicted of thefts, burglaries and drug possession.

"I'm lucky," Renfro said. "I'm very, very lucky that no one was hurt and that I got my purse back."

Later, when she saw the man again outside the police station on his way to jail, he apologized, Renfro said.

"Apology accepted," she replied. "God bless you."

http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Pur...s-Grandma.html

[Nell]

Any other state she probably would be charged for hitting him with the car. Gotta love Texas.

[FlamingFox]

ROTFLMAO! I love her! I'm out of thanks Tazzz, so I'll get ya tomorrow!

[Tazzzz]

Yeah, only in Texas can you get away with that. If I tried that here in California , I would be arrested and in court for attempted murder with a deadly weapon.