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TriBob
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Joined: 29 Aug 2002
Posts: 5771
Location: Lost in Transition
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 Posted: 12/07/05 - 16:15 Post subject: Everyday heroes
Civilians nab robbery suspect
http://kennebecjournal.mainetoday.com/news/local/2165467.shtml
Monday, November 21, 2005
Civilians nab robbery suspect
By BETTY ADAMS
Staff Writer
AUGUSTA -- Lorelei Pushard had just put a birthday cake on the passenger seat of her car in the parking lot of the Hannaford supermarket on Willow Street when a young man came up to her, grabbed her purse and shoved her face-first to the pavement.
Karen Skidgell, heading into the store to get coffee with her fiance, Eddie Boudreau, heard Pushard scream and saw a man run off with a purse.
Skidgell threw her cell phone to Boudreau, telling him to call 911, and then took off down Willow Street after the purse-snatcher.
"I was hollering at all the cars," she said.
Skidgell's screams got the attention of Jeff Miller, who was bicycling from his downtown office at the Bicycle Coalition of Maine.
"I must have biked right by it and was at the base of Myrtle Street when I heard shouting. I looked back over my shoulder and saw this man carrying a purse and this woman screaming 'Thief.' I turned my bike around. The man turned around and ran back toward Hannaford," Miller said.
Skidgell and Miller both grabbed the man and held him until Boudreau arrived to help and said police were on their way.
Miller said the man didn't put up much of a struggle.
"What a dumb, dumb thing to do," Miller said. "He didn't have much will to fight. He said, 'Let me go back and return this and apologize to her,' but we said, 'No. We'll just wait.' "
Pushard's purse had landed in the street. "I took it back to her after the guys had (the suspect) on the ground," Skidgell said.
At the scene, Officer Joe Burke of the Augusta police arrested William T. McDonald, 19, of Chelsea, and formerly of New York City, and charged him with robbery.
"Apparently this kid tried to trick her in a couple of ways," said Officer Chris Shaw, who was interviewing witnesses in a Willow Street parking lot next to the Hannaford store. "He told her, 'You dropped a dollar on the ground.' "
"It was a terrible ordeal," Pushard, 65, said Sunday afternoon as she prepared a birthday dinner for her daughter in her Augusta home.
"I'm hurt. I have sore shoulder."
Pushard was anxious to learn the identity of the woman who returned her purse.
"I wanted to thank her for that," she said.
Betty Adams -- 621-5631
badams@centralmaine.com
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