EXCLUSIVE: Bucks County Purse-Snatching Victim Speaks To CBS3
By Diana Rocco
BENSALEM, Pa., (CBS) -- The video shows a man stalking women in a grocery store parking lot. He follows one, then shifts direction when he finds an easier target -- a woman loading groceries into her trunk, seemingly unaware.
The man then snatches her Coach bag and runs to a waiting car.
"The next thing I knew is I didn't feel my strap and I see the gentleman going across the parking lot booking it," she said.
It happened in a Bensalem Giant parking lot Sunday. Susan didn't want to show her face. She was one of three victims over the weekend.
"You don't think these things happen but they do," said Susan.
The bag was eventually found, minus $120 in cash and a debit card.
"That's our money for the week or two weeks depending how it goes you know," she said.
Police arrested Robert and Conner Reilly, brothers on a purse-snatching spree and looking for quick cash.
"These two brothers saw an opportunity. A pocketbook on a woman's shoulder, a pocketbook in a shopping cart, a pocketbook on the front seat of a car," said Bensalem Director of Public Safety Fred Harran. "As the holiday season comes upon us, we'll probably see more of these."
When it comes to crimes of opportunity, police say the most common targets are people who aren't paying attention to their surroundings or those who are distracted by other things. They say women, when walking through parking lots, should always carry their bags in front of them or under their arm like a football.
"If they see a woman or an individual that is aware of their surroundings, looking around, an individual that is holding their pocketbook tightly to their body, they are less likely to go after that individual," Harran said.
"I'm not ever going to take a purse to a grocery store again," said Susan.
Susan is already doing things differently and hoping other women can learn from her story.
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