Toddler weeps as mom cuffed, robbed

NALINEE SEELAL

A DAY before International Women’s Day, a woman was attacked, beaten and robbed by a man in Woodbrook while she was walking with her two-year-old son. The child wept as he watched the man cuff his 26-year-old mother in the face, push her to the ground and tried to steal her handbag in broad daylight on Gallus Street, Woodbrook.

Camera surveillance footage from a nearby building captured the incident and footage was uploaded to social media and went viral. Up to press time, the suspect and his accomplice were still at large. Yesterday, Elena Marie Rivers remained in a daze saying she never thought she would be a victim.

She said what stood out most in her mind was that she knew there were people at the nearby Woodbrook Pentecostal Church who would have been alerted by her screams. But no one came to help her.

Rivers said that at 3.30 pm, she picked up her son Kaeden from a nearby nursery and was returning home when on Gallus Street, near the church, a man dressed in a white T-shirt and black three-quarter pants crossed the street, walked towards her, cuffed her in the face, pushed her to the ground and began shouting, “pass everything you have.”

Rivers said her son began sobbing, but after being struck, despite being in a lot of pain, she decided to fight back and struggled with the bandit. “When we began to struggle, the man grabbed my cell phone valued $4,000 from my purse and placed it in one of his pants pockets. I managed to gather myself and I snatched the phone from his pocket, which I think enraged him and then he began pulling my handbag, which contained my wallet and some important documents.”

The young mother said she was still struggling with the bandit and told her son to run towards the church.

A second man in a green T-shirt intervened and told his partner in crime, “Get off of woman this is too much.” Rivers said the man even pulled the bandit away, but this enraged him and he grabbed at her neck. He managed to snatch a Spanish link gold chain valued at $1,000, then ran away.

However, his accomplice asked Rivers if she was okay, then left in the same direction. Rivers said people from the church slowly began walking towards her but she was taken up with comforting her son, and they both made for the nearby health facility, where staff who had heard her screams came out to help.

After being treated, Rivers contacted her family, then went to the Woodbrook police station to make a report. Police took her and her son to the St James hospital, where she was again treated and a medical report taken. Yesterday, she took the day off from work to recuperate and to await word from Woodbrook police.

She said she had not heard from them but was hoping the law would take its course. Police sources said yesterday they are working on information and arrests are imminent.

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