A Wauwatosa mother had just arrived home Wednesday and was helping her 2-year-old son into the house when she was grabbed from behind by an unseen assailant who demanded her purse.
According to police reports and her account:
The victim's husband called 911 just after 4 p.m. to report that his wife had just been robbed outside their home in the 1300 block of North 68th Street.
The woman, who asked not to be identified, said in a phone interview Friday that she had just pulled all the way into her driveway to the back of the house and gotten her son out of their van.
"As we got out of the van and got to the deck," she said, "from out of nowhere someone grabbed me." She said she was taken by two hands around her waist, and she instinctively turned to her attacker.
"He said, 'Don't look at me!'" she said. "I screamed, and he told me to 'Shut the (expletive) up!' Then he shoved his fist, I think it was, into my side.
"I didn't resist. I had my purse hanging on my arm, and he took it off and then ran away through the neighbor's backyard and then through the side street, Blanchard."
She said hadn't put her house or car keys back in her purse, so she quickly got her son inside and called her husband, who immediately called police.
Neither the woman nor her son was injured.
Officers combed the area but did not spot the suspect. The victim described him as a black man with a dark complexion, about 20 years old, 5-feet 9-inches tall and with a thin build. He was wearing a gray sweatshirt with the hood up.
Property recovered in West Allis
The woman's purse had held cash, credit and identification cards, and her iPhone. Within less than an hour, she received a call from a 16-year-old West Allis boy who told her he had found her phone in the street in the 7400 block of West Hicks Avenue.
met the boy there and recovered the phone but had found no other property or evidence at the time their report was filed. But the victim said that her purse had also been found in West Allis at about 7:30 that evening.
"All the cards were there," she said. "Of course, I had canceled them. All that was missing was cash."
