On Saturday, August 27th, 2016 a 55-year old woman was shot in the leg in New York City protecting her bag from a mugger. As she was buzzed into an office building on 5th Ave, the suspect slipped in behind her and tried taking her bag, but she wouldn’t let go, he then started hitting her with his gun and finally shot her and took the bag and ran off.
This is something I can’t comprehend. I have known many women who were hurt trying to keep their bag from being stolen. When I asked them why they just didn’t let it go, they responded, “because all my stuff was in there.” Duh, make other arrangements.
If this was an attempted rape I would say, fight for your life, because quite often after a sexual assault women are often badly beaten and sometimes killed. But this is for a bag?
Having viewed countless CCTV tapes of these types of robberies around the world, there seems to be automatic reaction from women to hold on to their bags. The best way of correcting this is proper training, to either fight off the mugger with a weapon or let the bag go altogether.
In this still clip from a CCTV source (on top), a woman is being mugged, if you look carefully at the image on the left, she is walking with her hand on or in her bag, most probably close to her handgun. The mugger comes up and grabs her bag, they wrestle for a few seconds, she pulls out her gun and shoots him in the chest – good work!
To prepare for this type of robbery, you should have 1) always have duplicates or copies of all your IDs, credit cards and important papers at home, 2) Better yet carry your important documents on your body, 3) If you are walking through a questionable area leave an adequate opening in your bag with your hand gently resting on your handgun ready to draw at a moments notice. Remember to adjust the bag so you can easily draw your weapon.
For those women who can’t pack a firearm because of their local laws, at least carry a knife or OC Spray. The best response however would be to just let the bag go.