Good Samaritans corral purse-snatch suspect

2 pursue man after witnessing street chase

Scott Green had just left work and was waiting to pull out of the driveway about 4:30 Thursday afternoon when he noticed a man sprinting down the street carrying a purse.

A few seconds later, a woman ran by.

“I knew something was wrong,” Green said. “I was on the phone with my wife and I told her, ‘I think this lady’s purse got stolen.’”

Green briefly made eye contact with a man across the street who had also noticed the unusual scene playing out in front of them.

“He was covering a lot more ground than she was. So we just started chasing him in our cars,” Green said.

The initial chase began outside the Viet Hoa Food Market at Cleveland and Court, where police said the purse was snatched and the victim ran after her robber, but she soon lost track of him.

But by then Green — whose wife was still on speaker phone — and his fellow good Samaritan had managed to corner the purse snatcher with their cars near an empty apartment complex at Jefferson and McNeil.

Fortunately, Green said, that’s when the cops showed up.

“It was an exciting 15 minutes,” he said.

Police arrested the suspect, who threw the purse at an officer shortly before he was taken into custody, but no charges had been filed by late Thursday, according to police spokeswoman Sgt. Karen Rudolph.

As for the woman who went home with her belongings intact, Green said, “She was just really glad that we helped. ... It ended well for her, and not so well for him.”