A man wielding a knife demanded that a 74-year-old Fort Worth grandmother give him what was in her purse on Monday, and she did just that.
Jewell Turner was sitting in her minivan outside of her doctor’s office when she says a man in his mid-20s tapped on her window.
“He stood there and we talked for a while,” Turner told NBC DFW. She said the man asked for directions before escalating the situation.
“Never thought that when I turned my head that that young man would stick a knife to my throat,” said Turner, who is a widow.
She said the man told her “I don’t want to hurt you, but I want your money. And I will hurt you if I have to.”
Turner said she did not have any cash, only coins. The man demanded her purse. Turner reached for it and initially thought to grab a pocket knife that her late husband gave her that she carries.
But Turner quickly remembered she had something better — something she said she felt the need to bring with her that very day.
“I seen the gun laying there. And I figured that would work better than the knife,” said Turner, who, fittingly, has a portrait of John Wayne hanging on her living room wall.
“I just reached down, got the gun and turned around and pointed it to his face,” she recalled.
“And I told him, I said, ‘You back off, or I’ll blow your head off.’ And his eyes got big and he just backed up and he took off walking down the street like nothing happened.”
Turner said the incident shook her up.
“It’s the most devastating thing you’ll ever have in your life. It scares you to death,” Turner told NBC DFW. “I don’t want to go through that ever again. And I don’t want nobody else to go through it.”
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