EXCLUSIVE: 82-Year-Old Man Pepper Sprayed, Robbed In Frankford
By Diana Rocco
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - An 82-year-old Frankford man was pepper sprayed, assaulted and robbed walking home Tuesday morning.
"I tried to fight with the cane. I kept jabbing him in the stomach until he got me down on the ground. Then when I was down on the ground he kept going in my pocket and I was pulling on his hand. He kept grabbing my pocket," said the victim.
Just home from the hospital and covered in cuts and bruises, he's talking only to CBS 3. We are concealing his identity for fear of retaliation.
The elderly man was walking home from Wells Fargo bank as he does every month with enough money to pay his bills. As he turned up Griscom Street, just a stone's throw from the transit center, someone came up behind him.
"He called me, he said 'sir' or something, and then he sprayed the stuff, my eyes started burning like mad. I just kept jabbing him with the cane," the victim said. "Everything was burning. My face was burning, my eyes was burning."
"No one should get preyed on, but I get especially upset about elderly and children," a relative of the victim said. "We are glad it's not worse, and want to make sure it doesn't happen to somebody else."
The man's family wants the attacker caught. He got away with $1,200 and left him lying on the street, until a woman stopped to help.
"I said 'I've just been assaulted, I've just been robbed, please call 911'," the victim said.
Philadelphia police are reviewing surveillance video from area cameras.
