Occasionally a robber chooses the wrong victim and ends up becoming the target. This was the case with a robbery in downtown Chicago.

A 50-year-old woman gave a robber a religious lecture last Friday after chasing him for almost a mile and cornering him in an alley, according to the Chicago Tribune.

The incident occurred shortly after midnight when the woman was riding a Chicago Transit Authority bus in the Loop. Jenar Sanders, 18, grabbed her wallet from her purse, jumped off the bus at Huron and State streets and made a run for it.

The woman began chasing Sanders and alerting others as she ran down the street. A hotel staff member at the Omni Hotel and the CTA bus driver notified police, officers said.

The chase ended with Sanders cornered in an alley off Superior Street between Wabash Avenue and Rush Street. He was surrounded by the victim and others who had joined the chase.

“She kept telling him God didn’t want him to steal her wallet,” a police source told the Tribune.

Sanders is 6-foot-3 and weighs 270 pounds. The woman is 5-foot-8 and a little more than half his weight.

“The woman’s lucky,” a police officer told the Tribune. “She grabbed him. She was lucky this guy wasn’t a violent guy. They had him in an alley without an exit. He’s a fairly substantial man.”

I would agree with the police officer. I had a similar incident occur when I was 18 years old. As I was entering the bank where I worked, a young women tried to steal my purse. I beat her up, dragged her into the bank and left her in the lobby while I and my co-workers hid behind the teller glass window waiting for the police to come. I am not a large woman, but I used to have a lot of sassy spunk.

As I have aged and become wiser, I would now just give up the wallet. First of all, I can’t run as fast as I once could, but secondly, there are far too many violent people out there and it’s not worth losing your life or getting seriously injured. Now I carry pepper spray and an alarm in case I am faced with a life or death situation – in which case I think that 18 year-old spunk would kick in. It was instinctive to fight back, now my instincts would tell me to let it go.

I am glad the woman was not harmed and that others joined in the effort to help her.  

Sanders was arrested by two officers at 12:35 a.m. He admitted to the crime and was charged with theft.

Read story@msnbc

Staph Infection Bug

Just when you think you’ve heard it all, someone surprises you. This incident sounds like an episode that could be written for one of my favorite dark comedy TV programs.

“Give me the money or I’ll touch you” was essentially the threat.

Police say Fred Parker, 41, tried to rob a western Pennsylvania gambling parlor by threatening to spread a staph infection. Police said he walked into Lucky’s Internet Cafe in Sharon, PA on Monday night and began touching the walls and gambling machines, claiming he has MRSA – a serious staph infection that resists antibiotics.

Parker then made his way to the cashier and told him he had a deadly and highly contagious disease and offered to walk away if the cashier gave him money. Sharon police Chief Mike Menster says Parker threatened to infect the cashier if he didn’t give Parker money. The chief tells The Herald newspaper of Sharon, “It’s our first case of robbery by threat of an infectious disease.”

Parker also gave the cashier a note identifying himself as an “officer with the U.S. gambling commission,” Menster said.

The cashier apparently didn’t find Parker’s threat of infection to be scary enough and refused to give the would-be robber the money. Parker turned around and left. I wonder what would have happened if Parker had made a move to touch the cashier. You can just see it now – the cashier running around the cafe being chased by a man threatening to touch him.  

A description was given to the police and Parker was arrested a short time later. Ironically, he was captured in a Rite Aid store. Maybe he was getting medicine for those nasty symptoms.

He remains in jail after being unable to post bond.

The police weren’t messing around. They not only charged Parker with robbery, but they also charged him with making terrorist threats.

Sources: Security Today, Huffington Post, Effingham Daily News

Seven teenagers were charged yesterday morning for an attack and robbery of another teenager on Chicago’s south side. The attack was caught on video and went viral on YouTube. 

The attack took place around 4:00 p.m. on Sunday in an alley behind an elementary school. Six boys and a 15-year-old girl are accused of participating in the beating and robbery of a 17-year-old male.

Only one of the attacker’s names is being released because he is the only one in the group who can be charged as an adult. He is 17 year-old Raymond Palomino, a student at Kelly High School. He is being charged with robbery and aggravated battery.

The other six attackers – two 16-year-old boys, three 15-year-old boys and the 15-year-old girl — were charged as juveniles, also with one count of robbery and one count of aggravated battery. Their names were not released due to their ages.

The video posted online shows five males kicking and punching the victim while taunting him with racial slurs. The victim was eventually able to run away. He was taken to a local hospital where he was treated and released.

Items stolen from the victim were a pair of gym shoes, a wallet and cash.

Although the victim is of Asian descent according to The Associated Press, police say the crime does not appear to have been racially motivated.

The Chicago Tribune provided more details about Raymond Palomino and the possible motivation for the attack. Raymond Palomino’s father is a Cook County sheriff’s deputy. His father’s name is Michael Palomino. He said his 17-year-old son Raymond is being “made out as the fall guy.” Michael said he called police and agreed to turn his son in after seeing the video on the news.

After the hearing, his father said the attack was “retaliation” for an incident last month when the victim and his friends jumped Raymond and another boy after school. After that incident, there was a lot of trash talking on Facebook and things spiraled out of control, the father said.

Outside court, the teen’s father said that Raymond is generally a good student who has done well in school, but got mixed up with some friends who are troublemakers.

His son appeared in court wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt and blue jeans. He hung his head low throughout the 10-minute hearing and appeared to have tears in his eyes as he was led from the courtroom.

Palomino’s defense attorney, Ilia Usharovich, said Palomino is a “young man with no criminal record who was ashamed to find himself where he was.”

Prosecutors said Palomino and the other boys persuaded the girl to lure the victim into an alley in the 2700 block of South Shields, where the others were waiting to beat him.

When Palomino saw the victim walking through the alley, he yelled “get him!” to the others, according to Assistant State’s Attorney Erin Antonietti.

Sources: MSNBC and The Chicago Tribune

To read MSNBC story and view video, go to: msnbc

To read Chicago Tribune story, go to: chicagotribune

I am always shocked at how much personal information people are willing to share on their social sites, but seriously, this is definitely a case of TMI (too much information).

An 18-year-old Pittsburgh man is accused of burglarizing a market with three teens, then posting pictures on his Facebook page showing the suspects posing with some of the loot.

Isaiah Cutler has been in jail since last Friday for the Dec. 12th burglary.

Police say 17-year old Cutler and two 14-year-olds stole more than $8,000 worth of cash, cigarettes, candy, and checks from the business. About an hour later, police say, Cutler posted pictures of the teens posing with the loot on his page on the social networking site.

Well, I guess they’re just stupid kids,” Detective Valerie Milie said Monday. “They thought they could put (the pictures) out there for their friends who friended them on Facebook to see. But the one kid had 200 friends, but not only were they friends, some of them were relatives who became concerned and called police.”

Police were already tracking down the teens based on the Facebook photos and the surveillance video from the store by the time the parents determined what happened, Milie said.

The younger suspects have been charged in juvenile court and have been released to their parents.

Cutler faced a preliminary hearing yesterday on charges of theft, burglary and conspiracy.

Sources: MSNBC, CBS News