Elderly Ont. woman stunned by daytime mugging
For 83-year-old Ruby Thompson, a trip to a local bakery in Toronto last week ended in heartbreak. Thompson, who lost her legs to diabetes six years ago, was mugged in her wheelchair in broad daylight.
Thompson had left a bakery in the city's west end Friday and was heading out with $450 she had just taken out of the bank to get started on her Christmas shopping.
"When it gets real cold on this wheelchair, well, I freeze to death. It's like a lawn chair, and the wheels are too small for snow," she explained to Canada AM Monday.
"So I try to do that while the weather is warm because when it's too cold, you know, it's very hard for me with no legs."
She says a "pretty" girl of about 16 years old followed her on a bicycle and then made a grab for her purse.
"She was behind me, I guess, all the while on a bicycle. And then she come up behind me. She says, 'Will you move over?' She says, 'I want to pass by you.' And she come up, so I moved over, I stopped. And she wheeled up beside me," she recalled.
"And she says, 'I'll take this.' I had the purse on the back, and I grabbed the handles to try to hang on, you know, but she took me and this (chair) right over top of me, my legs. The wheels were spinning and everything.
"And then she rode off fast. But I couldn't see her because I was on the pavement with my back to her. She had twisted me right around."
Thompson had broken her arm in the fall and injured her hip. Her power wheelchair was also damaged so she is now using a manual wheelchair lent to her by the hospital where she was treated. But with the use of just one arm, she can't maneuver the chair well.
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