Purse-snatcher victimizes shopper at Phoenix mall
Jun 22, 2020, 10:30 AM | Updated: 11:01 am
(Desert Sky Mall Photo)
(Desert Sky Mall Photo)
This purse-snatcher’s get-up may get him caught.
It happened Saturday, Sept. 27, 2014, at Desert Sky Mall near 75th Avenue and Thomas Road in Phoenix.
A shopper was walking inside the mall when, out of nowhere, she was attacked.
“This guy must have scouted her, followed her a little bit,” Phoenix Police Sgt. Derek Elmore said. “He came up as she got close to the doors and grabbed her purse, shoved her away and ran outside.”
The thief ran to an older, boxy-type vehicle with a tarp covering the passenger side window and took off.
The woman wasn’t hurt but all of her cash, credit cards and ID were gone.
The suspect is described as in his late teens or early 20s, and was wearing a long-sleeve camouflage shirt, dark shorts and red Converse Chuck Taylor shoes.
Our next case is a homicide.
“The victim was 33-year-old Michael Collins,” Elmore said.
On Sept. 11, 2013, just before midnight, Collins got into an argument with a man that witnesses described as a “big guy.”
They were fighting in a common area of the Missouri Crossing Apartments on 17th Avenue, just south of Christown Spectrum Mall.
“Unfortunately, [Collins] was stabbed under the left armpit, which severed his brachial artery, vein and nerve,” Elmore said.
“Before losing consciousness at the hospital, [Collins] was able to say that the person who stabbed him was named Frankie.”
Collins died three days later.
This article originally appeared Dec. 1, 2014
