80-Year-Old Woman Fights off Robbers With Mangoes
It should’ve been another boring trip to the market for 80-year-old Otilia Martins, who was doing her shopping at her son-in-law’s New Bedford, MA store Friday afternoon.
But things took a turn when two gun-wielding thugs burst in and demanded money from the cash register.
Martins’ first thought was to throw something at the robbers from her purse. But when she couldn’t find anything big enough she turned to the fruit counter and began whizzing mangoes and apples. See video of the brave senior citizen’s produce vigilantism below.
In response to being bombarded with the fruit, Jesse Dossantos and Eduardo Torres Lopez, Jr. fled the market with the $500 they had so far collected, giving Martins a vicious pistol whip on the way out.
Manuel Nogueira, Martins’ son-in-law, was working outside of his store and was able to run one of the thieves down. The police caught the other crook a bit later, and they both face charges of armed robbery, carrying a dangerous weapon and assault and battery on a person over the age of 60.
As for Martins, she further proved her crime-fighting mettle by refusing to go to the hospital, despite a gash on her forehead thanks to the pistol-whipping.
“She was amazing,” her daughter Marie Nogueira gushed. “She said, ‘He’s lucky I didn’t have something stronger to hit him with.’”