A 97-year-old Harlem woman who was robbed and thrown to the ground by a thug on a scooter told The Washington Post on Tuesday that she wants “the bastard” caught and put in jail.
“He should go to prison for 20 years,” Thelma Mason fumed. “That way he’ll have more decency with people. He’ll never do this to anybody.”
“I can’t stand people coming at me when I’m travelling, especially motorbikes,” she added. “I always jump out of my skin. I’m scared someone’s going to attack me again.”
Mason was walking home from the store at the intersection of West 127th Street and 8th Avenue just before 5:30 p.m. on May 24 when she noticed a creepy man on a motorcycle staring at her.
“I was on my way home, minding my own business on the next block, and I saw a guy on a motorbike, I don’t know what it’s called, at the bus stop,” said the man in his 90s.
“I looked at him and he looked at me and I was just minding my own business and he started it up and came up to me and snatched the necklace off my neck.
“I was walking slowly like I normally do,” she said. “It never occurred to me that he was going to attack me.”
The vile assault left Mason with severe scratches on his arms and a blow to his lower back.
“It’s disgusting that he would do that to an elderly woman,” witness Carlos Santiago said Tuesday. “He was targeting her. He knew which way she was walking.”
“He came right up to the sidewalk by the bus stop and just waited,” said Santiago, 47. “When he saw her, he ran over on his scooter, grabbed the chain and just kept going. She fell and was injured.”
Meanwhile, police say the thief and an 18-karat gold necklace with a Gemini pendant, a gift from his daughter, remain missing.
Mason has lived in Harlem since 1951 and previously worked as a cleaner in office buildings.
“It’s a different world now,” she told The Post. “Before, I’d party at night and then come home and [at] I used to wake up at 2 or 3 in the morning and nobody bothered me. No one attacked me. Now, even before I go out in the daytime, people rob me.”
